In the Ring
by Juniorstarcatcher
Summary: Gale Hawthorne, the down-and-out boxer from the wrong side of town, lives for three things. His mother and siblings. His boxing matches. And his evening talks with Madge Undersee, the pretty mayor's daughter who sold him his beloved fish. But when he's offered the fight of a lifetime, everything Gale knows is threatened as he tries to defend his neighborhood and the ones he loves.
1. Chapter 1

The sound of leather hitting flesh rings in Gale's ears no matter what time of day or night it is.

"Ladies and gentlemen, for our third fight of the evening, the Hob Boxing Club is proud to present tonight's heavyweight match..."

But it is especially loud here, tonight, as it always is when he enters this cheap, dingy boxing club in a basement in the cheapest neighborhood in town. They call it District Twelve, on account of it's number of bums and losers. No one in District Twelve is exactly a zero, a nothing, but none of them are greats either. They're the ones and twos of humanity. So, District Twelve it is.

"And fighting Southpaw, a regular on this famed stage..."

Gale rises to his feet and begins bouncing from his left foot to his right. This old boxing ring is far from a 'famed stage,' but they pay his rent. Or, at least, they pay part of it. Boxing in the cheapest neighborhoods isn't exactly the most lucrative of business plans. He shrugs off his robe and cracks his neck on both sides. The greasy man across from him smiles a disgusting, toothless grin that makes Gale's stomach go bust. This isn't going to be a clean fight; this man isn't going to fight fair. They call out Gale's name, his fighting name, _T__he Hunter_, and the crowd greets him with mixed reception, something he's used to by now. People place their bets on his body, his stamina, his speed, like he was some sort of racehorse, all the while leaving Gale to remind himself why he loves this sport. It's a sport of survival. A sport of living. And Gale likes it, no matter what happens with the dark bookies waiting in the corners of the Boxing club, waiting to collect from the poor suckers who dare bet against The Hunter.

The young boxer meets his opponent in the center of the ring and feels the sole of his old boxing boot give out. Damn. He doesn't have the money for a new one. Shrugging it off, he bites down hard on his mouthguard as he levels an icy stare at the man across from him.

"Gentlemen," the referee begins, "I want a good, clean fight. You hear that bell, you stop swinging, you got it?"

Both fighters nod their assent, though Gale isn't sure the other man means it.

"Tap gloves."

They do.

"And...Fight."

And they do.

Gale's instinct is right; this man does not fight fair. The first three punches are cheap shots. Gale keeps his arms up, finding his only stance is the defensive kind. Right, left, his footwork is sloppy, but it's keeping him upright and standing. He gets pummeled to the ropes, but manages to duck under a left swing to the head and maneuver his way back to the center of the ring. That sound amplifies in his ears louder and louder and louder. Leather against skin. Skin against leather. The crowd. The roar. The crinkle of cash from the bookies. Leather against skin. Skin against leather. His skin busting. The trickle of blood down his eye. Leather against skin. Skin against leather. But this time it's his glove, it's his opponent's skin. Head. Head. Body. Head. Body. Head. Head. Body. Body. Head.

Noise. Noise. Noise.

And then, like the voice of God looming above him:

"One...Two...Three... He's out! K.O."

Knock Out. There's been a knock out in the ring. And, when Gale comes up for air from his fighting-induced haze, he realizes that he is the one still standing. The referee raises his glove in the air, and Gale feels the rush of winning fill his veins. He draws a deep breath in and listens to the unsavory crowd receive his win with mixed energy. He is not the only winner tonight, and the man at his feet is not the only loser. In the Hob, there is so much underhanded, unsavory work to be done, there are more winners and losers in this room than just the two-rate fighter known as The Hunter.

And, boy, does Gale know it when he finally approaches Sae for his cut of the night's profits.

"Well, let's see," the little old woman says, pulling out a pencil and pad from her drawer, "Winner's earnings tonight are one hundred and twelve dollars."

Gale knows that isn't true.

"Last week, it was-"

She holds up an easy hand to stop him.

"That was then. This is now. And this is one hundred and twelve dollars."

Reaching his taped and swollen hand out for the cash, Gale receives a slap from the hand of the old woman.

"Not so fast, kid," she begins, frantically scribbling something with her score pencil, "It's fourteen dollars for marquee listings, and twenty-eight for overhead. Of course, there's nine for my promoter's fee, and the deduction for ending it before you got to the third round-"

Gale's eyes widen as he slams his hands on Sae's desk.

"You're charging me for winning now?" He nearly shouts.

She shrugs her sweatered shoulders and types into her calculator.

"Brings you to sixty-one dollars."

He should have expected it. Of course they're going to cheap him out of every penny; he has been stupid for thinking that he might actually, once in a while, get the money that's due him. His teeth ache from grinding them so hard; his jaw throbs and throbs and throbs as he exerts more and more energy attempting not to go across that table and use the fists he's so deft at using to get the money they owe him. Sae half-interestedly offers up the cash to him.

"You want it or not?" She asks, quirking her eyebrow.

Breathing loudly through his teeth, Gale pulls the wad of bills from her hand and counts them greedily. Sixty-one. Just like she said. He shoves it into his pockets.

"When's my next fight?" He asks.

She pretends to look at the calendar hanging on the wall above her stapler, but he knows she's just screwing with him now. She knows that he needs her more than she needs him. There are more than enough scrappy kids looking to get into the boxing game, but not many promoters looking for a Southpaw getting up in age like him. He's twenty-two. That's a damn old boxer in this part of town.

"I'll give you a call. Pretty boy Odair's on the boards the rest of the week. You know all of the ladies love to see him dance."

The stupid boxer with the pretty footwork who'll wink at any girl who places a bet on him. Gale rolls his eyes. He happens to know for a fact that Odair and the pretty girl from the bait and tackle shop have been playing house for a year now. The girls can place all the bets they want, but Gale's bet will always be that the pretty boy goes home to his missus like always. But he knows, at the same time, that management doesn't care who Odair goes home with as long as he comes back the next day for his twelve-thirty a.m. match.

"Gimme a call when his pretty nose gets broken."

Gale is walking away when Sae calls after him.

"It has been broken. Twice. And it still looks a hell of a lot better than yours ever has, Hawthorne."

The sound of the older woman's cackling joins the sounds of skin against leather in Gale's head as he steps out onto the dark, chilly streets of his neighborhood.

His feet begin to take him somewhere without his even deciding to move that way. But when he makes the first turn away from his apartment and into the opposite direction, a true smile begins to lift his face.

But, then, he catches his reflection in a window. Shit. Better get cleaned up first.

* * *

Music fills Madge Undersee's head. Music and fish, really. But mostly music. Her fingers strike a chord on a new instrument that arrived his morning, and it swirls and spins around the room like leaves on a breeze. The cold outside isn't seeping in through the walls and the heater is tickling her toes with warmth, so when she plays the first few chord on this new piano, she can almost pretend it's fall instead of the dead of winter. Christmas is coming soon, and the pianos and harps and fish are getting lonelier and lonelier by the day.

Her father is the mayor of this town and chooses to live in District Twelve, the neighborhood with the worst reputation and some of the worst crime around. He's lived here Madge's whole life, and he says it helps him feel connected to his people, not the rich elite who live in the gated subdivisions like The Capitol, filled with political scum and snobs of every kind.

Which is all wonderful, Madge thinks. That is, until it comes time for Christmas season and the store is empty. As it turns out, her father's decision to open a high-end music store in the heart of the most crime-ridden, underserved area of town was not the best business strategy. They started to sell fish, too, as a sort of oddity and novelty. Fish and pianos. The brightly colored fish draw in the kids sometimes, but it still isn't enough to keep the place busy. So, Madge spends most of her days alone, listening to Delly prattle and prattle on, playing her music and, of course, waiting for the inevitable moment when Delly finally asks...

"Has Gale come in today?"

She asks that every day. And the answer is always the same.

"No," Madge mutters.

By this time in the evening, she's cleaning the dust off of the pianos in perfectly concentric circles. The white rag becomes gray with every pass over the mahogany stained wood. Then, as always, Delly leans in, her chest pressing against the top of the piano in an excited, overzealous way.

"I'm just asking. I don't think he comes in for the fish, you know?"

Delly winks. Madge rolls her eyes. Every ending, it is the same script, and every evening, Madge answers her in the same quiet, reserved, and nervous way. Being the mayor's daughter didn't exactly give her the most self-confident spark that everyone expects her to have. Instead, she leans back, waits for her turn to speak, and keeps her bravery to herself.

"I wouldn't know, Delly."

The other girl raises a single eyebrow, and Madge repeats herself.

"I wouldn't," she insists.

Tonight, Delly stands and folds her arms across her chest, giving Madge a look caught somewhere between pity and adoration.

"I just want you to know that he's a good guy. And if you were just a little more brave and stopped hiding yourself away all the time-"

Madge slams the wood cleaner down on the register's counter, harder than she anticipates.

"I'm plenty brave," Madge insists, not meeting her friend's eye.

A moment of tense silence passes between them, and finally Delly concedes.

"Alright," she begins, throwing her hands up in surrender before sparing a glance at the clock, "I'm going to start closing up. That okay with you?"

Madge knows why Delly is asking. Gale usually stops in by now. He's late, and Delly is trying to bait Madge into some sort of admission of love or something equally ridiculous. Gale comes around in the evenings sometimes for fish food and bowls and pebbles and things, but that is all. Madge refuses to believe that there could or is anything more than that. No matter how many times Gale hints at it, no matter Delly's insistence, Madge rejects any notion that Gale Hawthorne could be anything but the boy she used to go to school with and the man who now teasingly asks her which color fish like better, purple or blue.

"Yeah. That's fine."

Disappointment beats into Delly like a heavy drum keeping time, but she goes about her duties anyway. First, the locks on the windows, then the curtains. Madge cleans in her particular concentric circles, just as she always does, never faltering and never stuttering. Perfect circle after perfect circle after perfect circle until she's finished with the first piano and moves onto the second.

They work in silence. No humming or chatter. Just the slow and steady sound of the end of the day and the clock ticking by and by. Madge thinks about her work, her mother, anything to distract her from Gale. Anything to remind herself that her friend is not right.

"I'm locking the door now."

Madge flinches when the voice cuts through the room, her wide eyes looking up at her friend.

"What?" She asks, dumbstruck.

Picking up her large ring of keys and shaking them flippantly in Madge's direction, Delly repeats herself.

"I'm locking up," she remarks.

Drawing a large breath in, Madge smiles. Not because she feels happy, but because that's what she's meant to do at a moment like this, she thinks.

"Oh. Sure. Go ahead."

She returns to the piano. The jingle of keys at the safe. Perfect circle. The jingle of keys at the loading dock door. Perfect circle. The jingle of keys at the register. Perfect circle.

The jingle of keys at the front door. Finality. The night is over. Delly doesn't even attempt to hide her disappointment. Watching Gale and Madge talk at night is the highlight of her day. She practically lives for it.

"I'm gonna head home, okay?" Delly prompts.

Madge nods, not looking up from the wood, and her companion reaches to flip the "Yes, we're open," sign to its other side, when a knock resounds against the front door. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Delly quirks an eyebrow and looks up at her friend, awfully pleased with herself.

"I wonder who that could be?" She asks, knowing full well who it is.

It's Gale Hawthorne. Gale Hawthorne is at the door.

* * *

**Well, here we are! New story! Please review and let me know what you think! Next chapter will be really exciting! Can't wait to hear what you guys think in a review! :)**


	2. Chapter 2

They stand there is silence for a few moments as Madge's heart goes on pounding in her ears. The sound is matched only by the knocking of knuckles on the wood of the door once again. Madge thinks of the times before, when Gale has come in and cracked a joke with a kind smile, or talked about his fish. They're all memories she likes to look at, but not too closely, never too closely. She cannot stand the thought of intimacy. She cannot stand Delly's smug insistence that something should happen between the boxer and the shopkeeper. Delly quirks an eyebrow and holds her key ring up, nodding to the entryway expectantly.

"Should I let him in?" She prompts.

Madge nearly jumps out of her skin, pulled from a more recent memory of an encounter in this store, when Gale told her that his youngest brother tried to drown one of his fish. That story coaxed only a little smile out of Madge when it was first told, but Gale told her it was his greatest accomplishment of the day.

"What?" Madge snaps, suddenly thrust back into reality.

Delly's deadpan look gives Madge all of the information she needs to know; Delly thinks Madge has been in some sort of fanciful day dream about the man on the other side of the door. Absurd.

"You've been looking at the door for a while with that dumb look on your face. Should I let him inside?" She asks, raising an eyebrow in the other woman's direction.

Madge's heart isn't steady and pounding now. It is erratic and marathoning. Her body can hardly keep up and her mouth speaks before her brain registers the words, the words that Delly knows and understands, but doesn't particularly care about.

"We're closed," Madge reminds her.

Scoffing lightly and resting on her hip, Delly levels her gaze.

"That's not going to deter him."

Of course, Delly doesn't think Gale would do anything crazy like break the door down or wait for Madge to leave and follow her home or anything as scary as all that. He isn't a stalker; he is just smitten. Delly simply knows that, to Gale, being closed today means that tomorrow is another opportunity, the chance of seeing Madge tomorrow is enough to get him through the "Sorry, we're closed" sign tonight. Madge sharpens her gaze.

"We're closed," Madge repeats, simply.

As if on cue, a man's voice cuts through the wood door. Madge doesn't know if he's heard everything, and she isn't sure she cares if he has heard.

"I just need some fish food," Gale calls through the door, the quirk of his smile evident in his very tone of voice.

Instead of looking up or acknowledging his words, she applies more lemon-scented dust-remover to the fresh rag she took out of the cleaning supply kit hidden behind the counter, and returned to the piano in the corner. Perfect circle after perfect circle. Her body is so used to it that her joints hardly even ache anymore. She's at it for only four or five seconds before she hears the click of Delly's heeled boots against the floor, heading toward the sound of Gale's voice. Madge's head snaps up.

"Don't open it," she commands weakly.

_Give it a rest, _Delly wants to say. Unfortunately, she knows that will only hurt the poor boxer's chances even further, so she just shrugs and selects the key to the front door.

"He just wants some fish food. Besides, it's freezing out there. Give the guy a break."

She thinks on this for a minute. She doesn't want to seem cruel.

"Fine," Madge mutters under her breath.

She returns to her cleaning. She is a sore loser. A rush of cold air floods the room as Delly pulls the door open, allowing the winter to break the insulated heat of the shop. Madge hears Gale shuffle in, blowing air into his hands to return feeling to them.

"Hey, Delly," he says, a twinge of gladness and relief lighting his voice.

Sliding her coat over her arms and buttoning it up to the neck, Delly pats him on the shoulder.

"Hey, Gale," she responds, conspiratorially.

As he catches a glimpse of Madge, hovering over a piano, a smile slides on his face, one that looks like a stiff, cold-weather grimace instead of an expression of happiness. Delly attributes the poor execution of the smile to the fresh cuts on his cracked face, but knows that, somewhere deep inside her, whether she recognizes it or not, Madge will only find it all the more endearing.

"Madge," Gale says, nodding his head once.

The young blonde girl knows that there is no more dust on this piano, but she continues her near-frantic cleaning anyway.

"We're closed," she says quietly, with a measure of hopeful finality.

Nodding, Gale steps further into the shop, closer and closer by the step to her place near the piano in the farthest corner. There's still some distance between them, but he likes being near her; it's a simple pleasure for him.

"I know. Thanks for letting me in. It's cold out. Like stepping into the flu." He jokes with that grimacing smile of his.

The sound of clanking keys and Delly swinging the door open.

"I'm gonna head out," she calls before wishing her friend and Gale goodnight.

_Traitor_, Madge thinks to herself.

"Bye, Delly," Gale calls, watching at the door closes behind her.

Gale would never admit it, not to anyone, but this shop is one of his peaceful places. The noise in his head…The sound of flesh against flesh and Sae's laughing and the roar of the crowd and the cars passing him on the street and the rain against the pavement… When he walks into the door of this shop, when he looks at Madge Undersee, they all quiet down. She quiets the noise in his life.

She stands and moves to the next piano; this one is closer to him, which is a risk, but Madge knows the cleaning supplies will eat through the wood of the farthest piano if she doesn't move onward. She refuses to look at him.

"That's a pretty dress you have on," Gale says, trying his best.

It's one of her work dresses, simple and clean. It's modest and it is apparent to Gale that she doesn't dress for anyone, least of all him.

"Oh. Thank you," she says, ducking her head in deference.

Gale chuckles and takes another inching step closer, trying his best not to scare her off.

"You're so formal," he imitates her, his voice teasing, "Thank you."

When she was a child, raised in a politician's home, constantly a fixture in campaigns and public life, her greatest fear was taking a misstep and ruining everything. Gale's laughter quiets her; she thinks she's done something wrong.

"It's polite to say thank you," she nearly whispers, a tinge of embarrassment breaking her voice.

A flush colors her cheeks and Gale knows that he's screwed up. Piping up, he struggles to find the words to erase his careless mistake.

"No. Don't get me wrong. I'm not making fun of you. It's sweet," Gale says, backtracking.

Shit. He didn't mean to hurt her feelings. He rubs at his face tenderly, as if rubbing away the guilt he feels at the poorly chosen words, and thinks back to something that might cheer her up.

"Remember the first time we talked?"

Gale isn't sure why he thinks that this will be the story that makes her smile, but he's already halfway through the sentence before he realizes that it might be a bad idea.

"Yeah. You walked up to me and made fun of my dress because it was too nice to wear to school," Madge says, applying more lemon cleaner to the rag in her hand.

It's true. It was her first day of class, and he strode up to her like he owned the place, and asked if "her rich daddy bought her that pretty dress." She didn't react, as it wasn't her way to do so. Instead, she got even in the only way she knew how. Gale smiles as he thinks of it.

"And then you kicked my ass in stickball at recess, even in a dress that nice. Fourth grade," he says, nostalgic and gentle.

Madge still isn't smiling, and the realization sets Gale at ill ease. She's just scrubbing; from the moment he walked into the room, she hasn't looked up at him, not once. There's a hummingbird heart in Madge's chest cavity tonight; she's flitting and busying herself to keep from having to confront the wash of emotion filling her from the tips of her toes up. Gale tries to get a smile out of her, and remembers the last time he managed it. He told her about Vick trying to drown the last fish he bought from her, and she couldn't help but crack a smile at that. This isn't exactly a funny story, but sincerity runs through him, and he leans across a piano, easing the pressure in his ribs from the left jabs of tonight's fight and to incline himself closer to her for this one, brief moment.

"This dress is better than that one," he says, smiling completely in spite of the pain in his split lip.

The blonde's reaction is immediate.

"Thank you," she states.

For the first time, Madge stands to her full height and looks him in the eye. He's a jarring sight to look at, and the realization of him in his full, current physical form traps the breath in her throat. His face is broken. Black eye. Busted skin over the left eyebrow. Swollen and split lip. Swelling along his jaw.

Of course, Madge knows what Gale does for a living, this part of it anyway. She knows he fights down at The Hob, and she knows that it isn't very pretty. She knows that they don't play by any rule book down there. But… Seeing it? Up close and personal? It makes her want to reach out to him.

"Are you-?" She begins to ask.

His smile is lopsided- the pain in his right cheek doesn't allow him much movement on that side of his face- and his eyes are knowing. He stopped in a the bathroom of a run-down bar on the way over here and cleaned the blood away, waited for the clotting to hasten to his skin, but obviously it didn't do well enough. He still looks like a wreck. Gale deftly changes the subject, hoping to keep Madge from worrying about him; that is something he never wants to condemn her to.

"How's the fish food today?" He asks, laughing to himself at his own joke.

He points to the wall behind the counter. The store is built that way; the floor and showroom is entirely musical. Pianos. Harps. Stands. But, the entire wall behind the counter is dominated by fish tanks and shelves of food and bowls and nets and odds and ends for fish of all kinds. Madge shrugs and restores her cleaning supplies to their place below the counter. Her voice is quiet and shy.

"I don't know. I haven't tried it."

Gale continues to tease, watching as she turns her back to him to stare up at the fish food on the wall behind the counter; he follows her, standing on the outside of the counter, content to joke with her. One day, he knows, she'll come out of her shell. Not because of anything he does, oh no. It'll be because she's ready. And when she does, he knows she'll understand that he's been waiting for her all along.

"Sounds like shoddy business to me. Not testing your products," he laughs.

Madge reaches up and pulls a bottle of his usual brand from off the wall. Gale has goldfish, but likes to "bulk them up" with Beta fish food. Madge does not understand, nor recommend, this method, but she goes along with it anyhow.

"The fish seem to like it," she breezes.

The man across from her is an easy sell.

"I'll take it, then."

He holds his hand out to take the bottle, but she hesitates, as if there is some complicated moral issue attached to it.

"Gale?" She begins.

Is this it? Gale is shocked by how quickly she can make him hold his breath. He isn't one of these guys who falls all over themselves over girls. But Madge? She can make him pay attention.

"I'm concerned," she confesses.

Normally, she would be hustling him out of the store at top speed, taking his two dollars and change before getting him out without much exchange of words. But, today, she has some courage. Perhaps it's because animals are concerned. Perhaps it's something else, she couldn't say.

"Huh?" He asks.

They lock eyes for a moment, and the air turns static and dense around them, as if they couldn't move even if they wanted to. Gale can see flecks of color in Madge's eyes that he's never seen before. Green and black and silver, the colors of winter forests that hide infinite secrets. Then, when the unbearable weight of it all becomes too much, Madge turns her gaze from him and looks at her hands.

"I think you may be over feeding your fish," she mumbles.

A tension-releasing laugh escapes Gale's lips and he shoves his hands into his pockets.

"Why?" He asks.

"You've bought three cans of fish food in the last week."

"They're hungry little suckers, what can I say?"

"It isn't healthy," Madge protests.

Gale's gaze softens, and asks a question he knows the answer to.

"Why don't you come by my apartment and see them, then? Make sure I'm taking care of them?"

It isn't a come-on. It isn't a beckoning for her to go back to his for sex or whatever it is that normally comes from a question like that. It's fine. Gale's intentions are good, and Madge believes in them.

"No, thank you," she says.

It is Gale's turn for a confession. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and furrows his brow, as much as he can through the throbbing in his head from the blows he took tonight. Gathering his courage, he puts it into the one sentence he's been waiting to say, the sentence that Madge has been dreading.

"I didn't come in here for fish food."

She ducks his statement, avoiding it as if she hadn't heard, when, in truth, she both heard it and felt it.

"That'll be $2.39," she clips.

Gale knows that she's trying to evade this. But he's been coming in here for weeks, trying to start conversation, trying to make her smile, trying to make her _notice _him, just to build up the courage to ask her to go out with him. This is his shot.

"Look-" He breaks in.

Madge looks away. She can't stand the sad determination in his eyes; she cannot look at him because one look could ruin her strength.

"I need to finish closing up," she says.

Gale tries again.

"I was thinking-"

Madge holds up the bottle of fish food to him, a sort of physical barrier between them.

"Are you going to buy this or not?" She snaps, her eyes a bit more annoyed and a little less understanding than he's ever seen before.

He opens his mouth to ask her out, on a real date. Tomorrow, maybe. But, no. He looks at her this way, her eyes wide and her pulse visible against the skin of her wrist, Gale knows that it wouldn't be smart. He doesn't want to scare her off; he wants to love her.

"I was thinking that I could walk you home," he offers.

It isn't really what he wants. But, at the same time, it is exactly what he wants. To make sure she's safe, looked after. Happy. He's known her since he was a kid and all that time... It's always sort of been there. This connection between the two of them.

"That's not necessary," she confirms, terse and tense.

Her voice doesn't give any permission for him to continue this line, but Gale plows forward. The streets in a neighborhood like District Twelve aren't ideal for someone like _him_, much less for a girl like _Madge_.

"It's cold, it's dark, and it's late. I just want to make sure you get home safe," he pleads.

He is quiet. Still.

"I'll be fine," she says, walking toward the door.

"I haven't paid yet," he calls after her.

Everything is backwards. She wants him to stay, she wants him to walk her home, but she doesn't want those things at all, all at the same time. It isn't fair. Madge attempts to force herself into the strength she had when they first began tonight's dance.

"Just have it," she says.

He follows her to the door, where Madge is standing with her arms folded over her chest. He's trying his very best to quell the new ache in his chest that has nothing to do with tonight's fight and everything to do with the fact that she can't look him in the eye right now. Jaw grinding, she stares at the floor.

"But I don't- Madge, if you want me to get lost-" He begins.

She cuts him off seamlessly.

"Get lost."

Quiet. Deadly quiet. Gale feels like an arrow just tore through his chest. He struggles to swallow the feeling down.

"Really?" He asks.

She doesn't answer or move. She doesn't look up. He counts to ten, then twenty. And she doesn't make any move to try and keep him here. Then, he nods once, a sigh falling from his lips.

He knows when he's been beaten. He knows when he's been defeated. And, even after everything, he knows that he can still smile for her. He does, just a little bit, as he tries to catch her gaze, unsuccessfully.

"Alright. Have a good night, then. I'm gonna head out."

The front door opens. He's halfway down the steps in painfully slow fashion, halfway out of her night, when he hears her feet quickly pacing the store before calling after him.

"Gale, wait."

He turns on a dime, hope filling his eyes and his chest.

"What?"

In the dim light coming from inside the shop, Gale watches Madge conservatively flit down the steps until she is standing two higher than him. She extends something in the darkness, and, upon further inspection, Gale realizes that it is an ice pack. He takes it and looks up at her for some explanation.

"Your eye is swollen," she says.

And she's smiling.

It's almost indiscernible, but Gale can see it. He doesn't know what has caused this shift, why she's holding out what feels like a peace offering, but he accepts it, offering a beam of his own.

"Thanks."

And, with another goodbye from his lips, he turns and dissolves into the chilly night rain.

* * *

Gale's apartment is on the wrong side of the wrong side of town. A black hole of single room dwellings and junkies, this block has three working streetlights and no working police officers. But, it's a place for him to sleep, and it has working heat and water, most nights. He's in the middle of feeding his fish, realizing that he has spent more money this week on fish food than human food, when he hears a voice coming in from his front door.

"Gale!"

The older Hawthorne sighs, recognizing the voice. His glance flits upward toward the clock on the wall. Past midnight. Moving his aching body inch by inch, Gale crosses his tiny room to open the door.

"What, Rory?"

The door swings open and Rory's face immediate scrunches up in displeasure at the sight of his brother's busted features.

"Shit. You fight tonight?"

A few steps take Gale away from the threshold, allowing Rory to follow inside. Now tired and aching all over, Gale's patience for his younger brother's appearance at this hour runs thin.

"Yes. What're you doing out so late?" He asks.

Gale crosses to the kitchenette in the corner of this single room apartment, running the water of the sink cold over his sore knuckles. Rory holds up a plastic grocery bag in the air before passing it to his brother.

"Ma heard you fought again tonight. Wanted me to bring you some leftovers and make sure she heard right."

A stomach rumble can be clearly heard through the room; Gale isn't starving, he wouldn't go that far, but he hasn't had a square meal in a few days. Most of his diet lately has consisted of ham sandwiches and ninety-nine cent chocolate cakes from the gas station down the street. Opening up the plastic containers, Gale lets the smell of his mother's cooking fill the room, sighing in satisfaction before realizing that something feels odd here.

"What's Ma doing up so late?" He asks, suspicious.

Leaning against one of the half-painted, unfinished walls of the room, Rory looks off, not necessarily embarrassed, but not necessarily willing to share the details of his night with his older brother. Gale knows about Prim, of course; he's the reason that the two of them met. On her free weekends, Prim plays medic at the gym where Gale trains, stitching up minor things and patching people up here and there. Rory came in one day to check on his brother during a sparring session; the two kids locked eyes and that was the start of everything. That was a year ago, and they've been together ever since.

"She went to bed hours ago. I've been out with Prim," he says, offhandedly.

Gale is just about to pour some of his mother's rice onto a plate when this stops him in his tracks. He raises an eyebrow, cringing a half-second later when the muscles in his forehead contract painfully.

"Not getting into trouble, are you?" Gale prods.

Rory rolls his eyes; he isn't going to indulge his brother with this conversation.

"We're smart, Gale," Rory reassures his brother.

Gale wishes he could say the same thing for himself. He catches the sight of the discarded ice pack melting on his kitchen counter, and his mind drifts off to Madge Undersee. Her blue eyes and her gentle ways. Nodding to his brother's injuries as Gale shoves the leftovers in the microwave, Rory asks:

"Did you win?"

Brimming with cliches, Gale clips:

"You should've seen the other guy."

Distaste settles over the younger Hawthorne's face as he tries to imagine the guy that lost _this _fight. He's never been queasy around blood, but if Gale is the winner, he isn't sure he wants to see what the loser looks like.

"No, thank you," he grumbles.

Once he's set the microwave timer, Gale fumbles in his pockets and pulls out the bills from Sae. Almost all of them.

"Here's my winnings. I had to take ten out to cover the last of my rent, but give the rest to Ma for me."

Rory nods thankfully and pockets the cash. Then, he looks at his face.

"Y'know, Gale, I was thinking about maybe getting a job? Picking up a few shifts at The Mine? I'd make a real good sparring partner, I think."

Gale's heart almost stops. The Mine. He can't fucking believe this. The Mine is the boxing gym where Gale works. Seedy and grimy, it's where the low-lives of District Twelve fight for their survival, paying for it in their teeth and sweat and skin and blood. It's a two-bit operation run by crooked mobsters and kingpins. Gale started young. Twelve years old, after his father died, getting towels and water for the boxers who then seemed larger than life. It was just to pick up a little extra cash. That was all. But, at fourteen, he became a sparring partner. The money was better in that position, so he decided to do it. Little did he realize that he was signing his life away. What started as a way to pick up cash became a lifetime of busted lips and broken noses and midnight fights in front of bookies and tramps alike.

"You don't just pick up a few shifts at The Mine," Gale snaps, knowing how it works.

When you start working at a place like The Mine, you live and die there. It's a factory of fighters.

"You work there," Rory protests.

"It's different," Gale snaps.

"It's good money."

Not good enough. Not for this. Gale won't let his brother go through what he does.

"Yeah, and it's also your life," Gale barks, his voice almost raising to a shout.

As if diffusing the tension, the microwave begins to beep. Rory and Gale both take a step back from one another, breathing out sighs of relief at the end of a fight.

"I was just thinking about it," Rory says quietly, "I don't want you to spend your whole damn life getting beaten to a pulp to make sure we have grocery money."

He rubs the back of his neck and looks at the floor again.

"I like getting beaten to a pulp. It's the only thing I'm good at," Gale says darkly, picking a plastic fork from his drawer and digs into his dinner.

Oh, Ma's home cooking. Gale sighs gratefully.

Rory looks away from the floor, taking in the small, sad room round him. When he catches sight of Gale's beside table, he furrows his brow.

"What's with all this fish food?" He asks, impertinent.

"My fish're hungry," Gale says, defensively through a mouth of beef and rice.

Realization dawns over the younger brother. He knows what this is about.

"You see Madge tonight?" Rory asks.

"It's her store," Gale says noncommittally.

A sigh of aggravation falls from Rory's chest and he begins a sermon he's practiced a few times in his head.

"You're still hung up on her, aren't you? God, Gale, she's pathetic. Can hardly look people in the eye, and she hides in that damn store. When was the last time you saw her out?"

There aren't many times that Gale has felt rage at his younger brother. But calling Madge _pathetic_ makes the older Hawthorne's voice drop to a low that would send weaker men running scared.

"That isn't the point," he growls, putting his plate aside.

No, Madge isn't particularly social. No, she doesn't "go out" in the way that a girl like Delly does. It doesn't make her better or worse. She's just made different choices, that's all.

"Because you can't think of a time," Rory says, satisfied with himself.

Gale looks at his brother with sharp eyes, thinking about the blonde girl with the pianos and the fish. The girl who stepped into the rain to give him ice for a swelling eye.

"She and I are the same, Rory."

The younger knows when it's time to quit. He shrugs and holds his hands up, surrendering.

"I don't see it," he concedes.

Patting his younger brother on the shoulder, Gale walks him to the door.

"Go home. Tell Ma I'll see her tomorrow before I go to work."

Rory's halfway out of the door when he turns around, a winking smile accompanying his tease.

"Give my best to Katniss," He says.

Gale and Katniss grew up together and now they're stuck together at The Mine. It's the only place where kids like them can get work, and now they're both stuck there forever. Katniss as a trainer, Gale as a fighter.

"I don't train with Katniss."

He trains alone. His only companion is Peeta Mellark, his sparring partner who asks no questions and offers little by way of conversation. He takes his beatings, throws no cheap shots, and doesn't complain. Gale likes him alright.

"Maybe not, but I know she owns your sparring partner's ass, so you'd better hope she was good to him tonight, if you know what I mean."

Rory winks and makes a crude gesture; Gale responds by pushing him out of the door with a chuckle.

"Get outta here. Be safe walking home. These streets aren't safe."

"I'll be alright. I've got the old Hawthorne right hook," Rory responds, holding up his fists before walking out into the dark night.

* * *

"Hey, Mama."

Madge arrives home late. Her body is aching and her mind is a mess, but she walks into her mother's room anyway. The television is on in the corner, its blue glow filling up the room and illuminating the image of Madge's mother, in a hospital bed outfitted for their home. Cancer is a nightmare, and this room is like stepping into one. A live-in nurse sleeps in the adjoining suite and takes care of Madge's mama- bringing her to chemotherapy, giving her medicine, helping her with daily tasks-, but every spare moment she has, Madge spends in this room. Tied up to tubes and monitors, her mother's eyes flutter open, groaning a bit as she turns to face her daughter.

"Madge, baby. You're late," she manages.

Pulling a chair alongside her mother's bed, Madge explains.

"Had to stay open a few minutes later tonight. Last minute customer," she says, hoping for no further inquiry into the subject.

"I know. Delly called."

_Traitor._

"Did she?" Madge tries to keep her voice offhanded and light, but failing miserably.

As if she thinks she's just gotten the latest and best gossip, Madge's mother's voice dips into an excitable, if frail, tenor.

"Yes. She said that Gale Hawthorne stopped in," she says.

Drawing in a breath, Madge looks anywhere but at the woman next to her.

"Mama-" Madge attempts to cut.

A small cough escapes her mother's chest before she continues,

"For the third time this week," she says, awfully pleased with herself.

Madge is going to kill Delly.

"It isn't anything," Madge protests.

But mothers know best, and Madge's mother has watched her daughter sit in the room, in quiet reverence, for too long to not know the character of her heart. It is something, she's sure of it. But she knows that Madge is a shaking leaf when it comes to facing life, sometimes.

"It isn't anything, or you're scared of it being anything?" She prods.

Madge doesn't know what to say. So, she says the only thing she thinks that her mother may disapprove of.

"He's a boxer."

To Madge's surprise, this only makes her mother's smile grow.

"I know. Delly told me. He's pretty good, from what I hear."

It's a stupid sport, Madge thinks; she doesn't watch it or follow it, even for Gale Hawthorne.

"I wouldn't know," she says.

An eyebrow raise from the woman in the bed.

"He can't be coming in three times a week for fish food."

That is almost, verbatim, the same thing that Delly said a hour or two ago. Madge's annoyance reaches new heights with her friend.

"I'm blocking Delly's number. She isn't allowed to call here anymore," Madge says, hoping to end the conversation.

Madge isn't entirely sure why her mother, why anyone, is championing so hard for she and Gale to be, but she is all the same.

"Come on, Madge. He could be a good guy. You went to school together all those years."

Like an instinct, Madge defends Gale without even thinking.

"He is a nice guy."

Softening against her pillows, Mrs. Undersee sinks back into her bed.

"See? There you go. It's a start."

The television grumbles and Madge puts her hand atop her mother's nearly translucent hand, comfortingly. She doesn't want her mother thinking that she wants for anything. She doesn't need a man in her life, certainly not one like Gale Hawthorne.

"I don't need anyone, Mama. I have you and Pop and the store and Haymitch. I don't need anyone else. Besides, I don't even know what he wants from me," Madge whispers.

The protesting from the sickly woman comes back.

"You'll never know if you keep this up."

Madge gives her mother a look, begging her to stop.

"Mama-"

Leaning forward as best she can, the woman kisses her daughter on the head, patting her on the cheek lovingly.

"It's just something to think about. Goodnight, Madge. Get to bed. Love you."

She rises to her feet and heads for the door, giving her mother one last look before saying:

"Love you too."

* * *

**Here you go! It's SUPER long, and I apologize for that, but it felt awkward to cut off! I hope you guys enjoyed it, even though it was long! Please leave a review and let me know what you think! I'd really love to hear from you all. :)**


	3. Chapter 3

When Gale walks into The Mine the next morning, there is a crowd of burly, hulking boxers formed in the lobby, elbowing and jockeying for position in front of a flickering television set stationed on the front desk. Lifting his chin above the bodies for a better view, Gale manages to catch a glimpse of the screen just as he hears the familiar chime of the News bulletin. At first, he is prepared to continue walking, to ignore whatever it is that they are so glued to; however, when he sees Effie Trinket, decked out in her finest pink attire, on the runway of the airport just outside of the city, Gale's interest is peaked. Particularly when she turns and meets her intended target, Thresh. His black suit shines in the morning sun; his oversized Aviator sunglasses give him a ruthless look. Everyone has heard about the upcoming World Championship match being played here in the city, and now it's finally a reality with the arrival of the returning champ. Effie adjusts her hot pink suit top and speaks clearly and vivaciously into her microphone.

"Effie Trinket here with Channel Two News, coming live to you from the airstrip, where boxing champion Thresh has just arrived to begin preparations for this year's world championship bout. Thresh, do you think you're ready to face the Marvel of America?"

Gale rolls his eyes. Marvel's a great boxer with a terrible, terrible ring name. He'll take being called The Hunter any day. Thresh leans back on his hips and speaks decisively, with a quiet presence that glitters with sheer and awe-inspiring power.

"You'd better believe it, Effie. I guess you could say that people will be _Marvelling_ at how quickly I take my opponent down. He's great, but he just isn't me," says Thresh, his voice low and rumbling like oncoming thunder.

The interview continues on the tiny television, but the crowd of boxers begins to disperse, having heard everything that they need to hear. Peeta Mellark scoffs, taking a step backward, his face set in a look of mixed disbelief and nonplus.

"Shit," he breathes, running a hand through his hair as he shoulders his gym bag over his shoulder once more.

Taking the cue, Gale picks up his bag and follows his sparring partner, his eyes starry and far-off, thinking about new, red Everlast gloves and working in gyms that actually have air conditioning. Sparring with a guy like Thresh would open up infinitely many doors. It could be the way to get out of The Mine. Gale tries to swallow his excitement, but the light of it still leaks into his voice.

"I'd love to spar with that guy," he says.

Over his shoulder, a rowdy fighter named Cato buts in, giving Gale a good shove as they finally enter the full, empty warehouse that serves as their gym. Almost half a city block, the old coal warehouse has been totally gutted and is now filled with training equipment. A medic's station and locker room. Seven sparring rings. Punching bag after punching bag as far as the eye can see. It's a dump. It's dark and hot and the ceiling could cave in any minute; that's what it means to work in The Mine. At the feeling of foreign hands on his body, Gale twitches, looking over his shoulder at his assailant.

"You must like eating through a straw, then, 'cause that's how you'd end up if you so much as looked at Thresh," Cato says, voice made of gravel and self-importance.

Gale rolls his eyes, grinding his teeth as he grabs the strap of Peeta's bag. As he walks toward his assigned ring for the day, Gale pulls Peeta along behind him, leaving no room for protestation from the blonde.

"C'mon, Mellark," he groans, not even bothering to dignify Cato's remarks with a response.

It stings. Gale wouldn't lie about that. Cato's cutting jibe hits him like a glove straight to the head, but he has training to get to and a job to do. He doesn't have time to let the pain settle. When they're a distance away from Cato, Peeta pulls himself away from Gale's grip, inclining his head and speaking in a low voice.

"You really think they'd hire you to spar with Thresh?" He asks, raising an eyebrow as he pulls out the athletic tape for his knuckles.

Gale shrugs and pulls off his sweatshirt, reaching for his own tape and beginning to wrap his wrists. They sit, side-by-side, on a long wooden bench that feels about three pounds from cracking under their weight.

"If someone gave me a good enough rec, they would," Gale says with a nod.

Peeta's only trying to be helpful when he rips the tape with his teeth and tucks it tight, securing his joints as he says,

"Katniss would recommend you."

Then, behind them like the voice of God, a sentence is uttered.

"Thresh doesn't want to fight anyone lefthanded."

Gale and his sparring partner both jump, but Peeta lands with a chuckle.

"Speak of the devil," he says, looking up at his girlfriend with a winning smile.

Katniss stands, tall and proud, as she looks down on the two men. Her normal braid is in its normal place at the base of her neck, and already there is a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead from the morning training she's been running. She doesn't blush or stammer at the sight of Peeta; those who don't know them would think this nothing more than a business transaction. Her eyes only soften the slightest bit-even if her voice doesn't- before she places her hands on her hips.

"You gonna get to work anytime soon?" She asks, unamused.

She isn't their trainer, not that she ever wanted to be. But she has a responsibility to make sure things in this gym run according to plan, that there aren't bodies sitting in here just to keep out of the cold. If you come into The Mine, you come to work.

"Sure, Katnip," Peeta says.

Gale snorts and the young woman's gaze turns a little darker than it was a minute ago. The muscles in her body tense like a deadly animal waiting to spring.

"Don't call me that in here."

Peeta immediately balks, but doesn't lose his smile. He isn't afraid of her; he hasn't ever been afraid of her, which is perhaps the only way someone could love Katniss. Without fear.

"Fine. Fine," he says, holding up his freshly taped hands, hoping to indicate surrender.

Katniss shakes her head at the sight of his taped knuckles. The poor blonde never does the joints right. She motions for his hands and waits for him to extend them. Gale begins lacing up his shoes as Katniss fixes the messy tape job on her boyfriend's hands.

"Who are you gonna send to spar with Thresh?" Gale asks, breathless.

His heart always goes pounding a few beats ahead of him any time he prepares for training, and now he is facing not only the ring, but the prospect of Thresh as well. It's enough to make his head spin.

"If they ask me," Katniss counters.

There isn't any guarantee that they'll look to a club like The Mine for sparring partners, and Katniss never likes to count her chickens. Peeta shakes his head at her objection, knowing full well that they will call her for fighters. A place like The Mine is perfect for sparring partners. They're all poor as dirt, so they'll take whatever pay they're offered, and they're scrappy street fighters, so they won't take any cheap shots. Fighters from places like this will fight until they have nothing left. They lose pints of blood like other people lose pennies.

"They will," he reassures her.

Peeta and Gale slip their gloves on and look at her expectantly. Her eyes scan the warehouse, looking around and biting her bottom lip. Telling them isn't perhaps the best idea; she should keep her lips sealed until the deal is done so no one gets their hopes up or counts on an extra pay check that isn't coming, but she trusts Gale and Peeta with her life; she should be able to trust them with this.

"Odair. Probably," she finally concedes, watching the long and lean fighter in the next ring expertly send a fight-ending punch directing into his partner's gut, "Now, get up there."

She nudges Peeta in the direction of his ring, and Gale follows, slipping lithely under the ropes. Once Katniss is gone, off to settle a corner dispute between two frustratingly young boxers in Ring Five, Peeta and Gale tap gloves and begin their dance. Shifting their weight from side-to-side, they hold up their fists and talk as they sweat and pant their way through sparring practice.

"Finnick won't look so pretty after that fight," Peeta mutters, dodging a blow to his left.

Gale retracts his arm and laughs, taking a few ghosting steps to the right.

"You're just pissed 'cause he kissed you," he says, smirking.

Peeta corrects him, glancing a hit right off of Gale's shoulder. The breathing is heavier now and the words less and less put together, but Gale is able to follow along.

"Resuscitated me after you knocked me out cold," _punch, _"Remember," _dodge_, "that? You came in here," _dodge, dodge_, "all angsty and pathetic because," _blow to the stomach, _"Delly wouldn't tell you Madge's work schedule," _blow to the ribs. Punch to the gut, _"and you threw a," _punch, punch_, "left hook so hard," _duck, _"I saw stars for a week."

Swallowing back a bit of blood from biting his lip a little too hard, Gale curses himself for ignoring the gym rules about always wearing a mouth guard. It's salty and tangy and tastes like failure, but he and Peeta never wear mouth guards. Never have, and probably never will. Gale bit right through his last one during a bout with Thom, another fighter from the neighborhood, and Gale hasn't been able to afford a new one since.

"You should have deflected," Gale says smugly, dropping his shoulders for a better swing.

The offense isn't meant to be taken personally, and Peeta knows that. Like Gale's punches, he just lets them brush right past him, leaving little by way of actual hurt.

"The point is that it'd just be nice to not have a hundred girls screaming after Odair all the time," he mumbles.

The ropes around the ring shudder as someone jumps on them. Feet on the floor of the ring and arms holding his weight against the top rope, Finnick Odair beams a smirk and inserts himself where he is not wanted.

"Did I hear my name?" He asks.

This asshole has been taking Gale's fights and now he's distracting him during training. It couldn't get worse, could it?

"No, Finnick. Go back home to your girlfriend," Gale snaps, taking a step away from Peeta and toward his corner, indicating a break.

It isn't that Gale dislikes Finnick. Whether he has the guts to admit it or not, Gale is simply intensely, beyond words jealous of the other man. After all, Finnick got the girl of his dreams and is getting all of the Marquee fights down at The Hob. Gale seems to be getting nothing lately. The young man takes a long drag from his cup; his mouth is full of water when Finnick's easy quip strikes his ears.

"At least I can get one," he says with an easy shrug of his shoulders.

It's a stupid, school yard insult, but it stings Gale all the same. A fire ignites in Gale's eyes that must be visible to everyone, as Katniss calls out across the gym.

"Odair! Get over here. Stop jawing and do your goddamn pushups," she hollers.

Unfazed, Finnick leans across the ropes and patronizingly pats Gale on the shoulder, unbearable in his snark.

"Good luck with that Madge Undersee thing, though, Hawthorne. If you can't get someone like her, then I don't know what kind of man you are."

That isn't a difficult insult to decipher. Finnick things Madge is nothing, so if Gale can't get a girl like her, then he must be even less than nothing. Gale's body twitches to go over the ropes and tear into the pretty boy, but a warning look across the room from Katniss stills his motion and forces him to swallow his anger.

"Fuck that guy," Gale exclaims, banging his gloves together with a frustrated groan.

Peeta shakes his head, trying his best to lighten the mood.

"I don't think you're his type."

Gale levels his gaze at his friend before shaking his head clear and returning to the center of the ring.

"Let's get back to work."

* * *

It's nearly dark by the time Gale is leaving The Mine with fresh bruises and an aching neck when he hears a crackling voice from the stoop of the liquor store. It chuckles at first, and then grows into the catcall of gentlemen.

"Look who it is... The Hunter."

Gale stops in his tracks and rolls his eyes when he sees the man sitting on the step, handle of Vodka in one hand as his other hand points vaguely in Gale's direction. His face is flush, from the cold and from the liquor, Gale guesses.

"You should go home, Haymitch," he says, shaking a disapproving head in the older man's direction.

Everyone knows Haymitch Abernathy. Everyone. In District Twelve, he's something of a hero, or a pariah. Or, he used to be a hero and now he is a pariah. When he was Gale's age, he was the top boxer in the city. Not just the neighborhood, but in the entire city. But, he got too good too quick and got in deep with some sharks who fixed his fights.

That was how he lost his wife. Or girlfriend, no one really knows if he and Maysilee Donner ever actually got married. All they know is that when she got pregnant, Haymitch started losing too many fights that he should have been winning, and the Sharks don't really give warnings. Poor, pregnant Maysilee was found dead in an alleyway an hour after Haymitch lost to a second-rate fighter from the neighborhood, a fight he should have won in less than a minute. Haymitch has been a drunken mess ever since, and never fought again.

"Ain't got a home no more, kid. I live here now," he says, in a drunken, magnanimous voice that makes Gale shudder.

"That's bullshit."

Haymitch swings wildly between emotions when he's drunk. From magnanimous and high-brow to bitter and annoyed in less than three words.

"What the fuck do you know, you fucking southpaw?" He growls.

Gale takes a few steps toward the man's body, reaching out for the handle of Vodka, motioning with his fingers for the bottle.

"Give me that. And go _home_," the boxer intones.

Tugging on the glass, Gale finally manages to pry it from the man's cold fingers, holding it far enough out of his reach that he will not even attempt to grab for it.

"I'm staying under the gracious care of my niece for a while," he says, his voice lilting and caustic.

Gale's world slides into glorious colors at that sentence. His niece is Madge Undersee; Gale is holding Haymitch's liquor hostage and he can finally get the answers he's wanted, the help he's needed.

"Your niece?" He prods.

Haymitch nods and rubs his face. The bloodshot eyes and red skin aren't helped by this motion, but the man does it anyway.

"Can you see me walking in the mayor's house in any kind of condition like this? Madge'd have my hide and try and get me sober again."

There isn't a bone in Gale's aching and sore body that cares if Haymitch gets sober or if he shows up to the Mayor's house sloppy, falling down drunk.

"You're living with Madge now?" He proceeds, pushing it a little farther than perhaps he should.

Attempting a wild stumble to his feet, Haymitch reaches out like a child for the bottle in Gale's hands. A simple step back is all that it takes for the handle to once more be out of the older man's reach.

"Took me in after my landlord kicked me out. Good kid, that one. Give me my goddamn drink, please," he nearly shouts.

But Gale pulls it away once more, luring Haymitch farther off of the curb. This man isn't going to get his drink back until Gale gets the answers he wants. A rush of power bursts through Gale's veins.

"Tell me how to get Madge to go out with me," He commands.

This seems to sober Haymitch, if only for a moment. He stops dead in his tracks and reels, as if he isn't sure he's heard the younger man correctly.

"Huh?" He grunts.

Raising his eyebrows and speaking as if to a small child, he rattles the glass bottle in his hands, swashing the liquor around inside.

"You can have this back if you help me go out with Madge," Gale explains.

Then, something strange happens. From the pits of his stomach, Haymitch begins to laugh. An uproarious, most ridiculous thing he's ever heard laugh that gives him a headache. He slaps his knees and turns around in circles, rubbing an imaginary tear of delight from the corner of his eye. As if it is so unconscionable for someone to want to be with Madge.

"What the fuck would you want that for?" He asks through his peels of laughter.

But one look at Gale and all of his mirth vanishes. In the younger man's eyes, he sees a reflection of a man he has not seen since Maysilee was alive. Gale looks at Haymitch with a whispered desperation, a hunger from somewhere deeper than lust and far beyond mere interest. When Haymitch looks at Gale, he remembers for a brief and jarring moment what it was like to be in love with someone. And, no matter how sick it makes him or how much it makes his throat burn for a drink that will quell the feeling all at once, it melts Haymitch ever so slightly. His residual laughter eventually subsides, and he looks down at his hands, grasping at straws for something.

"Eh... Shit," he mumbles before an idea arrives to him, "Madge cooks on Sundays. Big dinner. Her pop never shows up and her ma's-"

Haymitch trails off there at Gale's interested look, unsure if Madge wants him to know about her mother's cancer. It's been kept pretty damn quiet, considering that her father is a public servant and all. He excuses her.

"She's hardly ever around, so it's just Madge and me, y'know? You be there, and I'll make things happen," he promises.

Gale looks skeptical, but allows the clear bottle of Vodka in his hand to move a little closer to the older man before him.

"Are you going to be half as drunk then as you are now?" He questions.

Snatching the bottle from Gale's hands, Haymitch takes a long drink, filling his mouth twice over before pulling it away. He drinks for his memory in the same way that someone erases a chalkboard. You'll never make it totally clean, you can never erase it completely, but it's cleared enough to write over it.

"Yes and you can't stop me," he says, satisfied with himself.

A murmur of hope flutters in Gale's chest. It's real. A real date.

"Fine," he concedes.

Haymitch rolls his eyes and nudges Gale away from his stoop, calling after him as the younger man heads in the direction of his mother's house. His steps are lighter. Even the aches in his body are quieter now, as if giving him some room to think.

"Sunday at seven. Be there, you fucking southpaw," Haymitch shouts, shaking his head as he collapses in front of the liquor store, with a bottle as his only friend.

* * *

When Haymitch manages to stumble home that night, eyes crossed with inebriation, he collapses in a chair in the living room. He rubs the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes tight. His hands bear new scratches over them from where he dropped his handle of Vodka and attempted to pick up the glass. When Madge comes downstairs and sees him, she sets to work. Turns off the television, knowing the noise will only upset him. Brings a waste basket to the side of his chair, in case of the vomiting. And reheats some dinner for him, leaving it on the side table next to him. Haymitch doesn't even acknowledge her until he hears her footsteps arrive at the bottom of the stairs, ready to head back up for bed.

"Hey, Madge?" He asks.

She stops and turns. He is still in his chair, still with his eyes closed.

"What?" She asks.

Haymitch knows he should tell her. About Gale and about him coming to visit. He knows it is a bad idea to spring such a thing on her. He knows that she should know in advance that Gale is going to come to their usually quiet and private Sunday dinners. But, when he manages to finally open his eyes and look at the girl at the bottom of the stairs, Haymitch loses his nerve. He shrugs it off and closes his eyes again, resigning Madge to a Sunday evening surprise.

"Nothing," he responds.

He tries to reason with himself. Maybe it'll make her braver. Maybe it'll make her stronger. But, then, a memory of Maysilee flashes before his eyes and he thinks that maybe he's just kidding himself.

* * *

**I need to dedicate this chapter and the last to Nursekelly, who has been an absolute DOLL in planning this story! Thank you guys for all of your awesome support! Please let me know what you think of this chapter! I know it's much less Madge than you probably wanted, but let me know your thoughts! Thanks for reading! Happy Easter and Passover for all of my friends celebrating!**


	4. Chapter 4

Madge is in her kitchen, stirring up a biscuit mix and watching a news bulletin about some sort of boxing thing- apparently the championship match set to be held in town soon is in trouble because one of the guys got hurt or something... Madge isn't entirely certain, she was only half-listening- when the phone rings. It's Sunday night and the family dinner that she goes through the motions of preparing every week is halfway finished. She picks up the receiver.

"Hello?" She asks.

She knows who is on the other line. Not because of caller identification or anything like that.

"Madge. Sweetheart."

It's her father. Right on schedule.

"Hey, dad," she says with a sigh and a put-upon cheerful voice that almost sounds sincere.

She wedges the phone between her ear and her shoulder and goes back to cooking. She rolls the biscuits into spheres before placing them on the cookie sheet in front of her. Idly, Madge wonders what excuse he'll be using this time, and even more than that, she's wondering if she has enough energy to even pretend to be surprised or upset at the 'revelation' that he won't be attending the dinner she spends every Sunday making for her family.

"I just wanted to call you and let you know that I won't be able to make it for dinner tonight," her father's gruff voice says from the other end of the line.

In her mind's eye, Madge envisions him in his plush office in City Hall behind a desk overrun with papers and folders. Bags under his eyes and a coffee cup in his right hand. Her father's a good man, and hard working, too, but sometimes Madge wonders if he uses his work to escape. He gives so much to the city, especially to the entire District Twelve neighborhood, but he never manages to spend much time at home with Madge and his dying wife. The realization that he's letting his wife waste away in a bed down the hall from the room they used to share together always makes Madge a little bit queasy.

"You don't say," she mumbles, knowing that he is only half listening.

Her voice is carelessly surprised, knowing that he actually doesn't care to hear her reactions. He is wrapped up in his work now, wrapped up in city planning and galas and handshakes.

"I'm meeting with Thresh and his team to discuss television rights. Very important work for the neighborhood," the Mayor continues.

In the background, she can hear some of his Aides walking back and forth, talking about this meeting and that lunch appointment. Her kitchen has nothing but the sounds of the television and the bacon sizzling in the pan for the baked potatoes she has put in the oven.

"Mh-hm," she groans, acknowledging him and waiting for him to just come out and say it.

That's, perhaps, the thing that Madge hates the most about his casual brush-offs of her Sunday meals. It's the lying. He will tell her "of course I'll be there next week" or "I'm so sorry I missed it. Something came up at the last minute." Every. Single. Week. But Madge keeps cooking the food and her father keeps mysteriously not showing up, so perhaps they're both lying to themselves more than they are lying to anyone else.

"All that to say that I don't want you to wait dinner for me," he finally says.

And like a good little soldier, Madge draws in a steadying breath and responds:

"Yes sir."

Perhaps Mayor Undersee wanted to say something else. Perhaps he wanted to tell his daughter that she should stop getting her hopes up or that she should yell and scream at him and demand that he come home. But he doesn't. His breath hitches and he holds it inside long enough to say,

"Goodnight, Madge."

With a fake and aching smile that she knows he cannot see, Madge nods her head once.

"Goodnight."

She'll have to take one of the place settings off of the table and the realization makes her sigh.

* * *

It takes the young man at the Mayor's door a few moments before he can buck up the courage to raise his cut and bandaged knuckles to the wooden paneling. Gale arrives early and Haymitch answers on his first knock, as though he was waiting on the other side for the younger man to appear. The man is noticeably well-dressed-well, better dressed than he was the last time Gale saw him; Gale assumes that Madge makes him clean himself up for her beloved Sunday dinner-and also, to Gale's surprise, noticeably off-put. There's something lost in the Haymitch Abernathy swagger today.

"Hey, kid," he says with a wave of his free hand, opening the door wider to allow the young boxer inside.

The young man nods once and lets himself in, his grip tightening the a paper plate covered in plastic wrap that he carries before his body like a shield. Gale doesn't let his voice waver, doesn't show any trace or hint of fear, but Haymitch was a hunter once, just like Gale is now, and he can smell fear a mile away.

"Haymitch."

Sobered steps make their way forward and Haymitch welcomes Gale into the Mayor's house, not speaking or doing anything but smirk the slightest of smirks at the younger man's obvious excitement. In spite of everything, in spite of finally getting the opportunity to see Madge somewhere other than her shop, Gale still looks at the vaulted ceilings and glittering lights of this house, this mansion, and feels infinitesimally small. Like some great hand is going to come from the sky and pluck him out of here for even daring think that he belongs in a place like this. Suddenly Gale wishes he had washed his clothes a second time or scrubbed his boots even harder than he did this morning; he feels like a speck of dust in this otherwise glistening palace. He clears his throat as Haymitch sinks into an arm chair, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table before him.

"I brought cake," Gale offers, saying the first thing that comes to his mind and hating himself for it.

A patronizing look settles onto Haymitch's face.

"I can see that," he responds as if to a small child.

Gale wonders idly where Madge is- where her mother is, even-but the thought is interrupted by the reminder of something heavy in a bag hanging from his wrist. The weight of it cuts into his skin, so he twists it off and extends a bottle of Vodka to the man across from him.

"And this."

A hand, scarred and mangled from a lifetime in a boxing ring, reaches out and takes the bottle from Gale's outstretched arm. Haymitch eyes it carefully and speaks out of the side of his mouth, not even giving his attention to Gale's awkwardly standing figure.

"Madge doesn't like it when I drink in the house," he says, the words rolling between his lips.

It was an extra bottle that his mother had in her house; she hardly ever drinks and encouraged Gale to "get rid of it" sometime ago, before his younger and impressionable brothers realized that it was in the cabinet above the sink. Gale kept it in his place for a while, but never had the impulse to get smashed drunk, and took only three shots of the handle in his entire time having it. All three times, he used the liquor to clean fresh wounds when the peroxide ran out. He shrugs and eyes Haymitch carefully, attempting to ignore the time bomb ticking in his stomach. _Where is Madge?_

"I thought I owed you something."

Haymitch's smirk grows wider and he stands to find the small bar located under a window across the room, pouring himself a healthy and generous glass of the liquid fire.

"Well, shit, I'm not one to turn down a gift," he says, throwing back a gulp.

A silence settles in the air, and Gale looks around. He's never been in a house like this before, not once. There's a marble fireplace along one of the walls and a chandelier and the furniture doesn't have holes in it and-

_Beep beep. Beep beep. _A kitchen timer.

"Haymitch!"

The offended party freezes, mid-drink. His eyes grow to the size of dinner plates. Gale's brow furrows at the sight of such a shift, but doesn't quite suspect anything in particular.

"Mm-hm?" He manages.

It's Madge. Madge just called Haymitch's name and whether he knows it or not, a light flickers in Gale's eyes.

"Dinner'll be ready in a few minutes," she calls.

Haymitch just finishes the rest of his drink and pours himself another, wondering to himself why he thought this was a good idea at all. Fuck young love. Fuck the memory of Maysilee and fuck it all. He has a handle of Vodka and that is looking like a better plan than anything to do with love. He gulps hard, loving the feeling of clawing flames ripping down his throat as the clear liquid goes down.

"So, what does she think about all of this?" Gale asks, cautiously optimistic.

Now that Haymitch has thought about Maysilee, he can't stop. Is she really standing outside on the sidewalk; is he really seeing her through the window? Or is it a trick of memory and alcohol?

"Huh?" He asks, distractedly.

Gale watches Haymitch's mind retreat from the conversation, so he speaks in clear, concise words laced with a quiet desperation.

"Is she excited? What'd she say when you told her?" Gale encourages.

The image of Maysilee out of the window disappears and Haymitch rubs his eyes lazily. He's so tired. Is it normal to be this tired all of the time?

"Well, kid-" He begins.

But then, the older man locks gazes with the younger man, and he loses his nerve for the truth. He sighs and pats the kid on the shoulder.

"She's real excited. Real excited," he says in a voice so thin that it's almost sad.

A flurry of a white dress, bare feet, messy, pony-tailed hair and bright yellow spatula erupts from the swinging kitchen door on the far wall of the room, and suddenly Madge is in their midst. Her voice is light, easy.

"Haymitch, Dad's not going to be here, so-"

She stops dead in her tracks; if this were a cartoon, her eyes would pop out of her head and her knees would visibly knock together like bowling pins. She sees Gale. Not his hopeful eyes or the cake he brought for the occasion. Not the attempts to clean himself up or the careful new bandages he put over his visually offensive marks.

"What are you doing here?" Madge blurts, not rudely, but flittering and taken off guard.

Gale doesn't hear her. He's too ecstatic. A rush of excitement fills his chest and he extends the plate in his hands out to the blonde girl in front of him, never breaking the gaze from her pretty eyes.

"I brought a cake," he says.

Her eyes dart down to the offending thing in his hands before going straight back to him.

"What?" She asks, furrowing her brow.

He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly feeling a rush of heat up his back; she seems tense, frightened. Not at all what he expected. If Haymitch told her, and she didn't call it off, surely that means that she wants him here.

"I made it and my mom helped a little, so at least the icing is edible."

A breathy laugh escapes his lips and he watches Madge's unamused expression turn to one of utter confusion. She looks at his clothes, proud and washed even if they have holds and are faded from years of use, his freshly cleaned face, this _cake_ that he brought and she can't help but ask:

"What are you doing here?"

Gale's stomach sinks. Hope stalls.

"I-" He begins, smiling even as he is afraid.

A hearty hand slaps his shoulder, and a voice lazily approaches Madge's ears.

"Sweetheart-" Haymitch begins, trying to calm the young girl.

She realizes. She realizes what is going on here and her voice turns into one of pleading. Oh, she hopes upon hope that what she _thinks_ happened isn't what actually happened. She cannot handle it if Haymitch betrayed her like this. A bitter taste of terror fizzles in her throat.

"Haymitch, you didn't-" She nearly whimpers, taking a step backward.

It is Gale's turn to be confused.

"He didn't what?" Gale questions, looking at the older man.

Madge sees the glass in Haymitch's hand, and her eye travels to the fresh bottle on the wall bar.

"And you brought him _liquor_?" Madge snaps, her eyes too betrayed and hurt to be accusing in the slightest.

So intensely, raging deluges of emotion pour through her entire body, betraying her heart before she can guard her physical body from exposing her. Her eyes are wide, her heart pounding, her lips turned down. The hummingbird that rests in the place where her heart normally rests is fluttering its wings so fast Madge can hardly breathe.

"Haymitch invited me," Gale attempts to explain, but Madge cannot look at him, much less listen to a thing he has to say.

Her attention is clearly on the offender, staring Haymitch down with eyes that beg him to tell her that it isn't so.

"You _know_ how I feel about this," she says, her voice small and broken.

If Gale weren't watching her so intensely, he would have missed that her hands are shaking and her eyes are pooling with tears. Haymitch is too drunk and too emotional to take her condemnation in stride. He twists the knife, his lips turned up into a nasty snarl.

"How do you feel? Afraid?" He asks, raising a prodding eyebrow in her direction.

For the first time, Madge speaks at her normal voice, as if Gale weren't there. She cannot look either of the men in the eye.

"Yes. And you know that. Okay? Yes. I'm afraid. Happy now?" Madge says, her voice cracked and her sad expression leaving no room for either man to reproach her.

She turns on her heel and retreats back into the kitchen, disappearing behind a swinging door before they can notice that her tears have begun to slip down over her cheeks. The silence that comes after a bomb has just exploded sinks between Gale and Haymitch, heavy and oppressive as a cloudy night sky.

"You didn't tell her," Gale accuses through his teeth.

Everything in his body is tense and he can do nothing but stare at the place where Madge stood only a second ago, as if her imprint is still hanging in the air there. The cake still sits in his hand, but, like the hope he felt when he walked in this house, it is a little deflated and sad now. Haymitch pours himself another drink.

"I thought the surprise would make this whole thing go smoother," Haymitch says, shrugging.

He downs the entire glass in his hands and calls out to the young girl.

"Madge-" He calls.

From the other side of the door, Madge is quiet, attempting to collect herself as she approaches her emotions in a series of easy, simple tasks. Wipe the tears from your eyes. Walk to the oven. Put on your oven mitts. Wipe a few more tears away. Open the oven. Pull out the convention.

"I've got a torte in the oven. I don't want it to burn," she says, a flimsy excuse.

Haymitch knocks on the wall beside the kitchen entrance, not wanting to push the swinging door with his knuckles on accident and startle his niece any more than he already has.

"Sweetheart, don't be like this," he calls.

She doesn't respond. When Haymitch gives up trying, Gale feels his hope disappear.

"What the fuck?" Gale mutters as sharply as if he were yelling, getting into Haymitch's face, blocking the older man's attempt to cross the room toward the bar. Haymitch tries to defend himself, knowing all the while that it is a flimsy excuse.

"I was just trying to help. She needs a shove in the right direction, that's all," he contends.

But Gale isn't buying it. Haymitch knows Madge like perhaps no one else does. He should know better. He should know better.

"You fucked up. You should have told her," Gale protests.

He didn't want this to be what their first...whatever this was supposed to be...to be like. He wanted her to be excited, wear her favorite dress and a new lipstick and smile when he arrived at the door. He wanted her to feel for him the things that he feels for her; he doesn't want to cause her to go into fits of panicked nerves at the mere sight of him.

"She needs-" Haymitch attempts.

But Gale has been trying to help Madge in any way he can for a while now. Haymitch should know by now what Gale knows.

"To have a say in things. I've been taking things so slow and now she's going to hate me," Gale says bitterly, convincing himself that it is the truth.

Haymitch could say any number of things. He could explain to Gale that Madge is terrified of love because she's watched Haymitch destroy himself because of love. He could explain that life is easier for her if she doesn't look at it too closely, if she watches it pass by her like a television program that she's not too keenly interested in at all. He could explain her fear. But it isn't his place. Instead, he lowers his head and motions toward the kitchen door.

"Go talk to her."

Gale rolls his eyes.

"She doesn't want me to."

The drunk shrugs, his voice honest and dry.

"Well, then she won't listen, but the least you can do is try."

Teeth grinding together and muffling the sound, Gale begins his walk toward the kitchen door, which seems to get taller and more imposing with every step he takes closer to it.

"You should be fixing this, asshole."

Haymitch shrugs and looks disappointedly at the empty glass in his hands before speaking and heading up the stairs with the handle of Vodka.

"Well, she wants to talk to me even less than she wants to talk to you, so I'll let you take this one for the team."

Ignoring the other man as best he can, Gale raises his cracking, scarred knuckles to the wooden doorframe, tapping twice, timid and skeptical.

"Hey, Madge. It's Gale."

Silence.

"I know this was a dick move on Haymitch's part, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor."

He rubs the back of his neck and listens for any signs of life on the other side of the wall he's leaning against.

"I'm not such a prize or anything, I get it, but it's Sunday and I'm basically free."

He waits. Nothing.

"Fish aren't much to talk to," he continues.

Gale laughs at his own joke and he wonders if Madge is laughing. Smiling, even. He would be happy if he even got her to smile a little.

"Anyway, I was thinking that maybe you'd like to..."

He trails off, unsure of how to approach that subject. If you'd like to _go out with me? Eat dinner with me? Marry me and spend the rest of our lives together? Not that I've been thinking about that lately...__  
_

"Well, I get why you wouldn't want to, Madge."

He thinks of the kind of guy he is. A boxer. A cheap, dirty boxer with a one room apartment and nothing to show for his life in The Mine but scars and debt.

"So, if you don't want to be with me or anything, that's okay."

He wishes he could take away her fear. Oh, he wishes it more than he's ever wished for anything in his life. A woman like Madge doesn't need to be afraid. Not when the world could so easily turn for her.

"You know, in boxing we have people in our corner, people who root for us and help us out."

Gale isn't sure if he should go here. But he gulps and takes a risk.

"And if it'll help you get brave, I'll wait out here as long as you want. Just so you know that someone's in your corner."

More silence. Gale settles himself against the wall, preparing for an awfully long wait. But the clock on the wall ticks a few times more before its steady pace is overscored by the creaking swing of the kitchen door. It is slow, tentative, but a step in the right direction. The blonde woman steps out and stands in front of him, her breathing and her hummingbird calmed to a manageable rate.

"Hi," Gale finally chokes out.

He's so happy and trying so hard not to let it show.

"Hi," Madge responds, quietly.

A wash of chocolate smelling air pours from the cracks in the kitchen doorjamb and Gale's stomach growls.

"How'd your torte come out?" He asks.

Madge nods.

"Perfect," she says, her lips hardly even moving.

Unsure of how to proceed, Gale doesn't speak. Finally, after moments of agonized thought, Madge runs fingers through her hair and looks at the floor miserably.

"This is stupid," she stammers.

Gale shakes his head this time, looking her in the eye and attempting to say the right thing, though he isn't sure he's every managed to do that in his entire life.

"No. It's a chance. You're taking a chance," he says, reassuring and calm on the outside, though his heart is pacing like he's just done a thousand jumping jacks.

"And what about you? Are you taking a risk?" She questions.

Gale looks down at his hands and grimaces a smile, a joke quick to his tongue.

"Well, I made this cake. So we might both be taking a risk by eating it."

Something magical happens then. Madge's lips tilt upward in a smile. An honest-to-God smile.

"We'll have a good time tonight, Madge," Gale says, his eyes lighting up. She smiled. She actually smiled.

Madge looks up at him from under her eyelashes.

"You promise?" She asks.

Gale nods.

"I hope."

* * *

In a luxurious hotel suite uptown, which is in truth only a few miles from Gale and Madge but what might as well be a universe away, a few men are arguing as the phones are ringing off the hook.

"God damn mother fucking shit-" Seneca Crane shouts at the top of his lungs, slamming the receiver of his telephone down on the table furiously.

"Language!" Plutarch Heavensbee snaps, looking from the stacks of boxer profiles in his head and looking from his fellow Match organizer to the young girl sitting on the edge of her older brother's bed, watching television quietly amidst the chaos around her.

Rue shrugs, looking up at Plutarch with the eyes of an angel, making the older man wonder why he ever doubted Thresh's judgement in bringing her on this particular trip. Not that his doubt would have made any difference, anyway. Thresh is never parted from his younger sister, and there is nothing in this world, not his fame, not a Championship Match, that could change that. They came from nothing. Their parents farmed sugar cane in the deep south, a life that hardly was a life at all, and now that Thresh's boxing stardom allows him to give his sister the world, he'll be damned if he misses even a moment of that.

"It's alright, Mr. Heavensbee. It isn't anything I haven't heard before," Rue says with a smile before turning back to the TV.

Her older brother furrows his brow and looks down at his sister, unsure and a little disturbed at her casual response to such crude manners.

"From where?" He asks.

He's always done his best to protect her. He'll be damned if someone's been using foul language around his little sister.

"Just around," she says simply with another shrug, picking up a bag of pretzels and proceeding to steadily shove them into her mouth with glee.

Thresh furrows his brow at her, but smiles all the same.

"We'll talk about that later," he promises, giving her shoulder a tiny, brotherly squeeze.

Then, like everyone else in the room, he gives his attention to the reporter on television. They're talking about his opponent, Marvel, who has miraculously decided to pull from the fight because some doctor declared him unfit to fight. Now, he and the producers of the fight are frantically coming up with some solution to their sudden match without a match-up.

"How did he manage to get a doctor to say he's all of the sudden got a heart condition?" Plutarch wonders, his body tightening in frustration.

A_ heart condition_. Thresh could laugh at how ridiculous it all is.

"He's afraid to fight me, that's all it is," the World Champion scoffs, sitting beside his sister and reaching into the bag of pretzels before producing one for himself.

"We need a new opponent," Plutarch says.

Seneca eyes the calendar on the wall. Less than two months before the fight.

"Who else is available?" He questions.

Plutarch shakes his head, holding up the files in his hand. Fifty ranked boxers. All of them dead-ends. No one wants to fight Thresh without at least six months notice.

"No one. No one'll fight him," Plutarch responds dimly, his face downcast as he frantically grabs for a solution.

Thresh watches the television with intensity as the sports caster gives way to the evening news. Their top story tonight? The bust of a massive contraband ring in the neighborhood commonly, famously, referred to as District Twelve. Thresh has heard of the fighters from that part of town. It's where his sparring partners are coming from. They're tough bastards.

"What about someone from District Twelve?" He says, expertly cutting into the other two men's conversation.

Plutarch raises an eyebrow.

"You want a guy from the neighborhood?" He questions.

"It's got appeal, doesn't it? I was from a place just like it. I rose up and became the greatest boxer in the country. Don't you think the people would like to see that again? Get some boxer from the neighborhood and tell him he's got a prayer of beating me and then I'll knock him in the third round. Hear that? It's the sound of money in the bank, gentlemen," Thresh says, smirking as he goes.

The other two consider it for a while. It could be _massive. _The fight of the century. Two men enter the arena. One Victor emerges. One victor and one loser. Millions of dollars in television royalties, tickets sold, merchandise... The money would print itself, practically.

"It could work," Plutarch concedes.

Satisfied that his work here is down, Thresh bows his head and nods at his younger sister to stand.

"Good. C'mon, Rue. Let's leave these gentlemen to find me an opponent."

* * *

**Here we are! Sorry it took so long! It's been a trip trying to get this chapter up! Thank you all for your lovely reviews. Please send me a review and let me know what you're thinking! :)**


	5. Chapter 5

Madge looks around the living room, her eyes scanning for any signs of her uncle. He is long gone, leaving not even empty bottles in his wake.

"Where'd Haymitch go?" Madge asks, her hands resolutely shoved in the pockets of her apron.

Gale points toward the mouth of the stairs, where Haymitch disappeared a while ago. This entire thing could have gone a lot better, but Gale knows that Haymitch's retreat was either a cowardly measure or a one to give he and Madge privacy. Either way, it leaves Gale reeking of guilty responsibility.

"Took the bottle up to his room," he mumbles.

Her mouth hardly moves as she understands.

"Oh," she says, gulping down.

Gale's starting to get nervous again. He holds tight to the cake in his hands, letting the tension in his shoulders relieve the butterflies in his stomach. He takes a step closer to the girl before him, tilting his head in contrition.

"Look, I'm real sorry about giving him booze. If you're trying to get him sober-"

Madge shakes off his apology with a shake of her head.

"Trying to get Haymitch sober is like trying to fill a colander with water. It'll never happen."

Weakly, her lips tug upward in a show of a smile. Gale takes a mental snapshot of the moment, filing it away in the corner of his mind where he stores memories of Madge smiling. They're few and far between, so he likes to memorize them. After a moment of quiet, Madge motions to the kitchen and mumbles something about getting dinner set out before it gets cold. Gale nods his agreement and follows on her heels.

"You don't have much faith in him, do you?" He probes, continuing their talk about Haymitch.

Madge loves her uncle. It was, after all, her idea to take him in when his last landlord kicked him out for being a (and this is a direct quote) "rowdy and ungrateful drunken son of a bitch." She takes care of him. Washes his clothes, makes sure he's regularly fed, takes him to his weekly appointments with a psychologist on the good side of town, all the things that she knows needs doing but that no one else cares enough to do.

But, because she loves him, she has made a hesitant friendship with his demons, too. And, in knowing them, she has no illusions about the sort of man Haymitch is, deep down. He won't let go of the memories of Maysilee's death because he doesn't want to let go of her. Even if that means he will suffer in a sea of pain and liquor for the rest of his days, he will cling to the night that he lost her. That is a reality that Madge accepts, though she wishes she didn't have to. No. She doesn't believe that he will ever change. Not for anything. She shrugs and begins picking up dishes piled high with food and balancing them on her forearms.

"He hasn't given me much reason to," she says, offhand.

Gale looks at the sight before him. The kitchen is immaculate, about the size of his entire apartment. And, what is more, Madge has cooked enough food to feed a small army. When Haymitch said she spent an entire day cooking, he obviously wasn't exaggerating. Gale's stomach rumbles like thunder and his jaw goes slack. The kitchen aisle and every available countertop is brimming over with dish after dish, far too much for he and Madge to ever even attempt to eat. Madge lightly clears her throat, pulling Gale from his reverie. Back to Haymitch's lack of trustworthy attributes. If Gale weren't himself, he might blush.

"Right. I guess I didn't help things, either," Gale says, following after Madge as she heads into the dining room.

Haymitch broke Madge's trust to get Gale through the door for this sham of a dinner. It's partly his fault that she's feeling so jilted, that her feelings of loyalty to him have been rubbed raw. She opens the door to the dining room and, again, Gale is left feeling a little off balance. It's a _formal dining room_. Like, this shit would have looked right at home on the first class decks of The Titanic.

Madge isn't going to lie to him; she isn't going to say that his presence here was helping the matters any. She lays the few plates that she has balanced in her arms on the table before heading back into the kitchen for more.

"Not really."

Gale stands alone in the dining room for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. The high, vaulted ceilings above him seem to mock him; for the first time in as long as he can remember, Gale manages to feel small. Finally, he sets his cake down on the table, giving a little self-satisfied nod as it finds its place beside the ornately presented plates scalloped potatoes and boats of bernaise sauce. He decides to go back into the kitchen, not knowing that Madge has been trying desperately to compose herself on the other side of the door. Her nerves are shot and it is taking everything in her to keep herself in a semblance of what others might consider normal, human behavior. He speaks before he sees her, opening the door to the kitchen as he goes.

"Madge, do you-" He begins.

She frantically spins away from the counter, where she has been leaning her body weight and trying desperately to get herself together, eyes wide and even the slightest bit guilty, like she's been caught doing something wrong. The look immediately sends shocks of worry to Gale's body. Madge struggles to find words, looking at the floor and her perfectly, immaculately kept hands.

"Look, I'm not so good at talking, okay? I'm sorry. I just-" She stammers.

All her life, Madge has been shut away in rooms while her father hosted grand parties for his political friends and confidantes, brought out only to play the piano or for the obligatory family photograph. Her only companions are Delly, who could talk into infinity and not tire of her own voice, Haymitch the alcoholic, and her mother the invalid, so she's never been particularly great at holding a conversation with anyone, much less the piece of work that is Gale Hawthorne, the Hunter of District Twelve. The Hunter now flashes her a reassuring smile, charming and warm, before looking at her with an understanding she hasn't felt from another person in a long time.

"Nah, that's fine. I don't mind doing the talking. Okay?" He asks.

There are still marks on his face from his last bout in the ring, the fight that ended with her giving him a smile and an ice pack. Somehow, they don't make him look intimidating, at least not in this moment. He looks like a warrior; brave and strong, a man who fights for something important. The knot in Madge's stomach loosens.

"Okay," she says, nodding.

His smile widens.

"Okay," he confirms.

They look at each other in silence until Madge feels a weight of awkward self-conscience thought weigh down hard on her. With a cough, she breaks the silence, looking back to the mountains of food sprinkled around the kitchen.

"Will you help me bring the rest of this-?"

She doesn't even have to finish the sentence; he is already at her side, picking up plates and balancing them as best he can on his arms, as he had seen her do only a moment before. One plate on each forearm and one in each hand, Gale hardly takes his first step before the plate on his left arm goes falling. Madge manages to save it just in time, lithely plucking it out of the air with her free hand. Caught off guard, Gale laughs and feels waves of pride radiate off of him.

"Nice save," he compliments.

Embarrassed, Madge just tips her head in thanks and tries to hide the blush on her cheeks with her long blonde hair. Grabbing up some plates of her own, she leads him back into the dining room. He promised her conversation, and conversation she will get.

"Y'know, I was never real graceful. Peeta rails me all the time for it. I'm clunky in the ring," he sets his haul down on the table before providing some information, just in case, "I'm a boxer."

Compulsively, Madge begins to switch and order the plates so they are to her liking, lining them up with precision and elegance. Yes, she knows about Gale's profession. She knows that he is a boxer and she knows that because Haymitch came home this one night a year ago, railing about how Gale Hawthorne could have been someone great, someone like he could have been, if he would just get his footwork right. Madge didn't understand, couldn't for the life of her understand how Gale Hawthorne could have become a boxer. But Haymitch sat her down and laid the whole thing out. He works at The Mine, a place that gives Madge chills every time she passes by, and those cuts that appear on Gale Hawthorne's face aren't just the remnants of bar room brawls, but are the battle marks of a guy just trying to make good in this neighborhood.

"I know," she says, keeping her gaze downcast as her fingers smoothly direct the porcelain china to her will.

Of course she knows, Gale thinks to himself, resisting the urge to smack his forehead. She's the goddamn Mayor's daughter. She must know everything. A bashful haze fills his chest.

"Right. Sure," he tries to recover, his voice strengthening, "Yeah, I'm not the prettiest fighter, but I can really smack, really hit."

Gale goes into his stance and holds his fists up before his head, attempting to show her his head-body-head trio, but somewhere in between the swings, his foot catches on the edge of the dining room rug, a giant and unnecessary Persian thing that Madge finds gaudy and her father finds perfect. He catches himself on the nearest chair before he plummets face forward down to the floor. In the split moment of this transaction, Madge's entire body has tensed, her eyes gone wide, and her hands have found their way over her mouth to keep herself from laughing. When Gale rights himself back to standing, he holds his arms out, shrugging.

"See? Not so graceful," he concedes.

Madge doesn't remove her hand from her mouth until she is sure she won't laugh at him.

"Yeah, so anyway, you know how I got started fighting?" Gale prompts, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

She shakes her head. She has no clue. Haymitch didn't exactly tell her anything about Gale's origins, not that Haymitch would know much about them anyway. Sitting down at the table, she offers him the chair across from her, which he gratefully accepts. Picking up a fork from the center of the table, she hands one to him before taking one for herself.

"When I was about twelve, my dad died."

Madge stops breathing for a moment; this was not how she anticipated this story going. Unable to function normally, she completely forgoes a plate and begins eating straight out of the chafing dishes with a fork. Gale follows suit, telling his story in between forkfuls of macaroni and cheese and pot roast.

"They were working underground, building the new subway line, and my dad and Katniss' dad-" Gale thinks about how many kids he knows who lost their parents and the familiar stench of rage fills his stomach, igniting his tongue and his eyes, "and shit, a lot of guys' dads were down there and there was this big fire and the city wasn't keeping it up to code and-"

He looks up at Madge, whose free hand has wandered across the table, close to his, almost close enough to touch. Retreating from anger, he steps away from his digression about this city's complete and total disregard for the safety of its citizens, and goes back to the point. How he got started in boxing. He promised Madge conversation, and conversation she will get. Madge is frozen in awe, caught up in his story, unsure why he's telling her this all of the sudden.

"Uh-Anyway," he continues, clearing his throat and reaching for what he thinks is sweet potato casserole, "I was out and around after the funeral-couldn't stand sitting at home- and I saw this poster for the new subway system around Towne Street, it had these smiling guys on it, and I just lost it. I balled my fists up so fast and just punched and punched until it was nothing but paper pulp."

Why is Gale telling her this? He doesn't know. He's hoping he figures it out along the way.

"And that's when Thread found me. He owns The Mine, beats us like animals. He found me and picked me up and said that he could use a kid like me. A kid with so much anger. Told me to wash my face because I was crying and only losers cry."

Ah. This is why he decided to tell her this story. This is it.

"So I fight to prove that I'm no loser, you know. That I can be somebody someday."

He wants her to know that he isn't what everyone says he is. He isn't a loser, a nothing. He's going to be somebody. It's a kind of promise. That's why he said it. Gale is looking down at the tablecloth, counting the lace rings as he waits for her to say something, anything, that might lighten the mood. But, instead of words, he simply feels a few hesitant fingers, with tangible pulses racing in them, reach out to touch his hand, resting on the table. Gale looks up from under his eyebrows, his jaw locked against the storm of feelings raging inside of him. Embarrassment, shame, pride, anger, fear...

"I don't think you're a loser," Madge says.

Her wholesome blue eyes don't carry a flicker of dishonesty or irony.

"You don't?" Gale asks.

Madge fills him with hope; it is her best and most terrifying quality.

"No," she says, shaking her head.

She releases his hand, and Gale nods appreciatively. He wishes she wouldn't let go, but in his gut, he knows how much it must have taken for her to reach out to him for even as long as she did. Little steps. They're moving in little steps.

"Thanks, Madge," he says, meaning so much more than that, so much more than he could ever actually say to her.

The pair of them release a collective breath. This isn't so hard, Madge realizes. It takes a bit of courage, but once they're talking, it isn't so bad. She reaches for the cake that he's brought, pulling the Seran wrap off of the top and setting it aside before putting it in the table between them and taking a bite for herself. Madge chews appreciatively. But before she reaches for the next bite, she says something that catches Gale off guard.

"You didn't bake this cake."

Gale is reaching out with his own fork when that sentence freezes him. It's braver than she has been all night, and her lips are quirked in a devilish little grin. He is hoping that he hasn't been caught dead to rights.

"Well, my Ma made the icing-" He attempts, but she beats him to the punch.

She swallows the last bite before shaking her head.

"No, she didn't," Madge quips, waving her fork side to side in a disapproving manner.

With everything in him, Gale is trying to keep up the fantasy that he's created, to keep up that air of goodness that he's put up around himself. After all, if she catches him in a lie now, she might lose all of the trust that they've been building all night.

"Sure, she did," He defends himself.

But Madge knows. She isn't stupid. For the first time this entire night, she feels like she's finally found her footing, like she's finally standing on solid ground. There is a gleam in her eye that Gale hasn't ever seen before.

"Peeta made it, didn't he?" She probes.

He's been caught. _Damn_.

"Huh?" He asks, trying to play dumb.

This little victory loosens Madge's tongue. Only a little bit, but enough to make Gale want to kiss the proud simper from her lips.

"He made my birthday cake last year," she says easily, "Strawberry frosting is my favorite."

Yes, it's true. When Gale told Peeta about going to her house for dinner, Peeta's immediate reaction was the age-old adage that you can't show up to someone's house for dinner empty-handed. Peeta's family runs the bakery department of the local grocery store, nothing fancy, but it gave Peeta the know-how to bake a simple cake for Gale to bring to the Undersee house. The damn bastard never told Gale that he had baked for Madge before.

"He's got a reputation to protect. Not many boxers want people to know that they bake cake in their free time," Gale says, attempting to defend himself and his friend.

He doesn't need to protect himself, Madge wants to say. She doesn't have much capacity for anger left today, not after how she treated Haymitch when Gale first appeared.

"Sorry I lied," Gale finally says.

Madge simply takes another bite and brushes off her concern.

"The cake was a nice gesture."

Gale points and decides to tease her, his eyes getting wide with his smile.

"You said I was nice, you can't take it back now," he exclaims, holding his arms up in victory.

Shoving her fork in his direction, Madge teases right back.

"I said the _gesture_ was nice."

"Ah. Sure," he says, his smile smug and superior.

They eat in silence for a long while, sharing the strawberry cake made by their friend. Finally, Gale looks up and asks a simple, silly question without thinking.

"Are you having a good time?" He asks.

Madge's answer is equally as thoughtless.

"Yeah. Yeah. I am."

And she's surprised to realize that she actually means that.

* * *

"And what we're really asking for is-" Seneca Crane begins, looking across the low-lit table settled in a dark corner of the high-end steak restaurant.

Mayor Undersee is the object of his pointed gaze, and it is he who finishes the sentence for the younger man across from him.

"A nobody," he supplies.

This is ridiculous, and injustice bubbles under the mayor's skin. This proposal, this outrageous plan, is nothing short of absurdly half-baked and cruel.

"Right," Seneca replies easily.

Eyes narrowing until they are nearly slits, the Mayor lets some grit enter his voice. These two promoters have come to him, asking for him to find a puppet of a young man to complete their world championship match-up, a kid who doesn't have a shadow of a chance of taking Thresh down, just to make the spectacle more fun, more exciting for a paying audience. The familiar taste of sickness settles into the Mayor's mouth.

"You want me to put a poor, ill-prepared kid out there to basically get killed by your world-class fighter? A kid from _my_ neighborhood?" He asks.

Plutarch Heavensbee is leaning back in his chair, less nervous than his counterpart. One way or another, Plutarch knows that this will get done. He is not uncomfortable getting his hands dirty, searching for a young man in the bowels of the District Twelve boxing scene, but Mayor Undersee is renowned for his connection to the poor and starving of his constituents, and if anyone will be able to convince a young kid to sign his own death warrant, it would be him.

"Not your neighborhood, no. Just District Twelve," he says, knowing that this will very much strike a nerve.

It takes everything that the Mayor has to hold his composure. His smile is tight and his polite attitude paper-thin.

"I'm afraid, gentlemen, that we clearly aren't on the same page here," he says, constricted and dry.

But Seneca pursues.

"Just think about it, sir. You get a paycheck, the kid gets a paycheck, tourism rates skyrocket. And, if the kid does die or get seriously hurt, then you won't ever have to go back to District Twelve again. They won't let you go back to the neighborhood. You can buy you and your wife a nice, big house in that neighborhood on the right side of the city. What was it called again?"

"The Capitol," Plutarch supplies.

Seneca has saved his biggest nail for last. Mayor Undersee's daughter. Oh, yes. He did his research. He knows that the twenty year old girl is pretty as they come and as virginal and vulnerable to attack as any young girl ever could come. He knows that this will be the final blow.

"Right. You can play with the big boys. And you won't be leaving your pretty little daughter in a neighborhood where she's practically asking to get into trouble. We wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

It isn't a threat that Crane or Heavensbee would ever make good on. But the fear is real enough that the Mayor gulps down, hard, and looks up at the other two men warily.

"One kid? One boxer from the neighborhood?" He asks.

Seneca shows his hand.

"That's all we're asking," he says.

But the Mayor wants to be certain.

"And you'll compensate him and his family?"

Plutarch nods.

"He'll get what's his."

The Mayor feels ill, but extends his hand anyhow.

"Alright. You've got yourself a deal."

* * *

**_Sorry for the long wait! I'm the worst! I had finals and move out and such for school, but I'm back home with plenty of time to write. Please leave me a review! I want to know EVERYTHING you thought! Thanks for reading! can't wait to hear from y'all!_**


	6. Chapter 6

The Mayor enters his house to the sound of something that isn't too often heard in this household, and it immediately puts him on edge: laughter. His even and heavy steps resound through the front entryway until they find themselves in the living room, where his daughter can most often be found at an hour like this. But she's not alone. There's someone else with her.

"Hello, Madge," he says in a stiff voice that doesn't feel like it belongs to him.

The two young people sitting on the couch, far enough away that they aren't touching, but close enough that it immediately makes Mr. Undersee's eye twitch in hesitation, rise to their feet. And Gale watches Madge do a backslide into the girl he knew an hour ago. Nervous. Tense. She makes herself small in her father's eyes, and it is enough to make Gale wonder if the girl he was laughing with only a few minutes ago is healthy hiding under the layers and layers of cautious quiet that Madge seems to bury her under.

"Hello," she says.

Gale wants to touch that place between her shoulders where all of her energy seemed to go, where the tension is resting like a boulder of nerves; just a light touch to remind her to breathe. Watching her in distress brings him physical discomfort. But he doesn't touch her. Instead, he reaches forward and offers his hand to the uniformed man before him.

"Gale Hawthorne, sir. I'm a friend of Madge's."

The Mayor looks between his daughter and the young man before taking his hand. They shake, but Gale can sense in the other man an urgency of hesitation, like something just isn't right. The Mayor's mind is in a darkness that pours from his eyes.

"You're cut up pretty bad there, boy," The Mayor says, looking between the bandages on the younger man's hands and the healing cuts on his eyes and lips.

Madge's pale skin turns flush under her father's scrutiny, but she knows that it is useless to even attempt to open her mouth against her father, especially when he is like this. She can only pray that Gale is as clever as she's always believed him to be, that he can evade the questions and move his way out of this conversation before things turn complicated.

"I'm a boxer, sir. It's just the nature of the beast, y'know?"

The lazy grin on Gale's face does a wonders for hiding his true feelings. The Mayor's eyes are dismissive, and Gale knows that his cue to leave should have come before the older man walked through the door. He runs a hand through his hair.

"I'd better start heading home. It's pretty late and all that," he concedes, grabbing his jacket from the chair he laid it over earlier in the evening, "It was real nice to meet you, Mayor Undersee."

With a curt nod, the mayor turns on his heels and heads for the stairs, loosening the noose-feeling tie around his neck as he struggles to maintain his composure. The words of Seneca Crane ring in his mind like echoes of a song he once used to know by heart... _And you won't be leaving your pretty little daughter in a neighborhood where she's practically asking to get into trouble. We wouldn't want anything to happen to her. _His troubled mind leaves the two young kids, this thoughts running in circles.

When he is gone from sight, Madge releases a breath that she had been holding for fear of hyper-ventilating. She looks up at Gale, ashamed without reverence.

"He's..." she trails off, trying to think of an excuse, "Not normally like that."

And it's true. He isn't normally like that. When there are guests, when his constituents are around, he isn't like that. With Madge, he will act that way without reservation. But not around guests. Never around guests. This change in behavior puts Madge in a state of nervous confusion.

"It's alright," Gale says with a shrug, not really meaning it. He doesn't think it's alright at all; no one should treat anyone like that...With such dignity and coldness... Especially not Madge, "But I really should get going."

Terror grips Madge's chest. Her fear of scaring Gale off has happened. Her father's entrance has sealed the deal. Of course. The sting of failure, just when she thought she was starting to get the hang of success when it came to Gale, bites her harshly.

"Okay," she almost whispers, her eyes falling to the floor as she leads the young boxer to the door.

Her disappointment is almost palpable, but when they arrive at the threshold, Gale says something that makes her cheeks flush and her stomach turn. That smile of his warms her in the places of her heart she didn't know could feel happy at something so simple. With a few words, cautious hope fills her.

"So, I'll see you tomorrow? I think I need some fish food," he says.

She grins. A real smile that almost makes the awkward encounter with her father completely escape her mind.

"Yeah. See you then," she nods, her voice gaining confidence.

They stand there in the doorway, just smiling at each other, until Madge coughs, uncomfortable with the sudden scrutiny.

"Thanks for dinner, Madge," Gale finally says.

And, were it not for Haymitch calling her from up the stairs, Gale is certain she would have kissed him.

* * *

The next afternoon, Gale is spotting as Peeta pounds his way through two hundred reps on the benchpress, but if an accident were really to happen, Gale isn't entirely certain that he would be able to stop talking and help out.

"And then, her dad came in-" He says.

Peeta's face contorts and his eyes flash from the weight he's lifting for the briefest of moments. Madge's father? The Mayor?

"Her dad?" He manages in a breathless, distasteful voice.

Gale nods. Today, The Mine is swamped with guys, all vying for a spot to spar with Thresh. The rumor is that they're looking for some sparring partners and Katniss got asked to pick out a few guys for the task, so naturally the place is swarmed with hopefuls like the prelims at a Miss Teen USA pageant. Katniss pays them little attention except to critique footwork or bark out that this is a gym, not family dinner, so if they're gonna stay, they've gotta stop talking and focus.

"That means you, Hawthorne!" She shouts, halfway across the gym.

The boxer nods and manages the task for about a minute. However, the second Katniss heads into the office, he lowers his voice to a whisper and continues his story, unable to keep something like this from Peeta.

"The mayor was a real frigid guy, y'know? Like, he had something going on and couldn't get his head on straight. And when he heard that I was a boxer-"

That's when Gale hears it. A voice peeling from just outside the office door.

"Hawthorne!" Katniss screams.

And he knows that he's in for it. With a sigh, he helps Peeta place the bar back on the rack and lets the other man sit up before nodding and looking up at the woman who will, inevitably, give him an earful for not following her instructions.

"Yeah?" He shouts.

But, to his shock, Katniss points her thumb over her shoulder toward the door of the office before walking off to a stupid kid who has managed to get himself wedged between the stacks of mats lining the walls. Instead of chewing him out, she merely shouts in a dismissive tone.

"You've got a phone call," she calls.

In his years at working at The Mine, he has never received a phone call here. Not ever. He looks at Peeta with a bewildered expression. Peeta merely shrugs and reaches for his water bottle.

"Don't look at me," the blonde replies through rough, ragged breaths.

So Gale breathes deep air into his lungs and makes a long, lonely trek to the office, fully aware of the looks given to him by the other boxers in the gym. The speculation is heavy in the air, but Gale doesn't catch any of it. He is in the dark, completely unsure and unsteady. When he finally arrives in the small room, his hand hesitates over the small telephone receiver for longer than he could bear to count. Then, with a surge of courage, he puts the phone to his ear.

"Hello?" He asks.

"Hello," a cheery, disembodied voice asks him, "I'm looking to speak to Gale Hawthorne."

The boxer sinks into a fading chair with ripped upholstery, nodding though the woman cannot see him.

"Yeah. You've got him."

Her cheerful voice does not lose its spark. She continues and Gale wonders if she's aware of just how horror-movie glossy she sounds.

"Wonderful. I'm from Mayor Undersee's office and he was wondering if you would be available to meet sometime today to discuss a few things?"

Mayor Undersee? Gale's stomach sinks to his feet and he cannot begin to understand- Unless the Mayor wants to keep him from Madge. But he doesn't even know him. How could he possibly know that he doesn't want Gale dating his daughter? In that moment, Gale is coming up with a million defenses, a million ways to keep himself in Madge's life should the Mayor reject his advances. But he manages to stammer out-

"Uh-What does he want to see me for?" He asks.

A brief pause. Then:

"I'm afraid I don't have that information. Can I put you down for six o'clock?"

* * *

And at six o'clock on the nose, Gale is sitting in a leather chair in Town Hall, looking at the clock and fighting the stone that has settled into his stomach. This feels like fighting fifteen rounds and he hasn't even set foot in a boxing ring today. The secretary is all smiles, polite and demure, but Gale has the feeling that she knows something that he doesn't, and it makes him the slightest bit ill. A buzz comes from her desk and she picks up her phone before nodding to Gale over her name plate.

"The Mayor will see you now," she says with a glowing smile.

Gale mutters his thanks and gulps before turning the brass handle. When he makes his way inside, he sees something that confuses him. It isn't just the Mayor in this office. No, it's two other men. One short and portly, his white hair slicked to the side, and the other tall and rail thin, his beard and mustache perfectly groomed.

"Ah, Gale! Gentlemen, this is Gale Hawthorne, the fighter I was telling you about," The Mayor says.

The boxer is immediately suspicious of the Mayor. He's all smiles today, beaming as though Gale is a grateful prodigy that he is presenting to his worthy colleagues. The two older men rise to shake Gale's hand. They introduce themselves as Plutarch Heavensbee and Seneca Crane.

"Please, have a seat," Mr. Undersee says before offering Gale something to drink, which he turns down.

Gale's mind is racing. Are these men hit men? Would the Mayor really have the audacity to have Gale killed in his own office? Would the Mayor really just kill someone for talking to his daughter? He knows this line of thought is ridiculous and childish, but he cannot help himself.

"Gale, we have a proposition to offer you."

Oh, shit. Gale doesn't like the sound of that coming from the mouth of Seneca Crane.

"Okay..." he begins, nervously, "Shoot."

The three suited men laugh at what they perceive to be Gale's folksy charm. It makes his stomach roll.

"As you know, Cato, Thresh's previous opponent for the Championship match has dropped out."

Suddenly, Gale realizes what he has been called here for. A smile breaks out over his face. Take _that_, Finnick.

"Oh, well, I'm a really good sparring partner. I've been training basically my whole life. And I know I fight southpaw, but I'm willing to fight orthodox if it'll help Thresh get ready for the fight. I don't mind that at all," Gale rambles.

Seneca and Plutarch make eye contact. Oh, yes. This boy is just perfect. Plutarch shakes his head, absolutely pleased at the boy that the Mayor reaped for this competition.

"I don't think you understand, Mr. Hawthorne. We're offering you the Championship match. We want you to fight Thresh for the Title."

When Gale was younger, when his father was still around, the young boy learned that a man's pride is basically all he's got when he lives on the wrong side of town with no money and no future. He has to be able to get up in the morning and look himself in the mirror and be proud that no one has ever taken him for anything, that he has been able to make something of himself without anyone's help or hindrance. And now, Gale feels his pride flare up.

"Look, I may not be rich or smart like you guys, but you don't have to make fun of me."

"We aren't, my boy," Seneca assures him, "We aren't. And your cut of this fight, win or lose, is half a million dollars."

_What?_

"Half a million dollars?" Gale repeats, just to make sure that he hasn't heard it wrong.

The three men in the suits nod, and Gale's mind travels away to a world where his siblings have new clothes and a house of their own in The Capitol and he can take Madge out on a real date, to some real nice place uptown and he can get out of the Mine, hell, he could afford to get him and Peeta and Katniss out of The Mine...Half a million dollars is enough money to buy a new life.

But...It's Thresh. The world's greatest fighter. The reigning champ. If he goes and gets destroyed, then he's a bum for the rest of his life. A loser who got himself beat up just so he could have some quick cash and his name in the papers for a few days.

After a few moments of Gale's silence, Plutarch pats him on the back.

"Look, why don't we take you and your family out to supper tonight to sort out the details, huh? See how you feel about things then?"

And it is with shaking hands that Gale calls his mother and asks them to meet him at _Victoire_, a restaurant where the politicians and elite are seen every night, but where Mrs. Hawthorne has never been even in passing.

By the end of the night, Gale has signed the contract. And he's going to be fighting Thresh in the Championship match in less than two months.

* * *

All day, Madge fights to keep her smiles to herself. She spends more time than she ever has before looking out of the window from the side of her eyes, checking to see if there is anyone of the Hawthorne persuasion making their way toward the entrance. Something like happiness tickles her all day.

He usually comes in around 10. The blonde lets Delly go home early, then watches the clock on the wall twitch her excitement. 10:15. 10:30. 10:47. 11.

Madge keeps the store open for an hour past closing time, her mind making up a million excuses for him, not wanting to face the truth that she feels resting in her heart. Oh, he must be running late. Oh, Katniss must have kept him late at sparring practice. Oh, Peeta must have gotten hurt. Oh, he must have gotten hurt.

But when it hits midnight, she lets defeat slide into her bones.

As she closes the blinds against the late night, she blinks back tears and listens to the truth that is bounding around inside of her. _He said he was going to come and visit me tonight. But he doesn't want to see me. Who did I think I was fooling? I'm pathetic. _

So, she closes the store and heads back home in the rain, holding a can of fish food in one hand and her umbrella in the other.


	7. Chapter 7

When Gale wakes the next morning, his head throbs ever more painfully by the second, pulsing at the speed of a lightning rod hangover delivered to him courtesy of a dinner with his family and the producing team of Heavensbee and Crane. The light bleeding from the tiny crack between the window ledge and his blackout curtain gives him a sliver of golden glow to see by, and he surveys his room, taking it in piece by piece. The tiny clock radio reads 10:27 am. His tattered old quilt leaves his feet exposed to the elements. The container of leftovers that his mother forced him to take home never quite made it to the ancient ice box huddled in the corner of his apartment, but rather sit out, abandoned on the card table sitting in the middle of the room. And his fish are swimming around their bowl, content and resigned even in the darkness.

Oh, _shit._ His fish. Fish Food. Fish Store... _Madge._

With a shake of his body, the sleep wrestles its way from Gale's bones, forcing him to his feet and his hand to run through his hair. The world tilts around him, the aftershocks of the champagne and Scotch running their course through his system like the reverberations of an earthquake, but he attempts to think things all the way through. _He promised Madge that he would visit her and she looked so hopeful and then he was offered the fight of a lifetime and went to dinner and he forgot to call her_... Damn. Rational thought is making little headway, so he settles into action instead.

He checks his clock again. 10:30, on the nose. In an hour and a half, he will be in front of a press room full of cameras so that they may hear the news of this almost certain death match. But... Madge. Yes. He has to at least try and talk to Madge first. There isn't enough time to make it to the store. No, he'll have to call her.

Over the block and a half run to the nearest pay phone, Gale assaults himself. Madge was _just_ starting to warm up to him, just starting to move past smiling at him when she thinks he's not looking...And then he goes and breaks a promise. And, to Madge Undersee, someone's word is everything. It's the only currency that she recognizes. After growing up in The Seam when she could have grown up amongst the elite children who go to the nice private school uptown, Madge learned that someone's word is often they only thing they have, and so even today, she values it above the money people attempt to throw around as a substitute for real worth.

Gale remembers a time when they were just children on a playground. _Or, more accurately, she was a child and he was a scared young boy pretending to be a man because he'd only just lost his father in a horrific accident. It was recess and all of the children reached into their backpacks for their snacks. Of course, being in The Seam, most of the snacks were nothing more than three day old apples from the five cent bucket outside of the grocery store, but the fact remained that only Gale was left without something to eat. And though he'd not spoken many words to anyone since his Pop died, Madge, with two blonde pigtail braids and a rope bracelet on her wrist, strolled up to him and offered him one of her cupcakes without so much as a word of her own, just a smile and an offering. Yellow cake with chocolate icing and a pink sugar bow on top. Gale will never forget that. _

_"__I don't want your pity," he mumbled in a voice too old for a twelve year old boy. _

_The young blonde girl looked puzzled for a long moment, her hand frozen in mid-air, the cupcake extended out toward him. But then she nodded and said,_

_"__Makes sense. You could pay me, then, if you want."_

_It seemed a decent enough bargain to the kid whose face was perpetually covered in dirt and whose pants always seemed a quarter inch too short for him. There was only one problem._

_"__I don't have any money," he said, easy as the weather._

_Now, there, Madge could see a problem. Her mouth formed a small O and she furrowed her eyebrows a little bit. If he has no money, then what exactly does he have? What do people have that are free and costly all at once? What is worth a cupcake to a hungry twelve year old boy?_

_"__You could trade me a secret," she began, thrilled at her own idea, "Yeah, I could give you this and then you could tell me a secret that I have to keep."_

_The young Gale shook his head. _

_"__I don't know if I have any secrets."_

_Twelve year olds always think themselves open books. Madge shrugged. _

_"__Take it on credit. You owe me a secret."_

_And with that, she dropped the sweet in his hand and skipped off to the other end of the school yard, content to leave him in peace and never speak of it again. But that night, Gale sat up tossing and turning, his stomach churning at the thought of the delicious snack she'd shared with him. The confection settled in his gut, hanging there painfully as he tried to think of a way to repay her. A secret...What secrets did he have?_

_"__I'm afraid I'm not going to make my father proud."_

_He whispered it into her ear during Music class, during open practice for their Recorder quiz, while the music was deafening and off-pitch, before turning back to his music and breathing a sigh of relief, happy to know that he paid his debt and could return to acknowledging Madge only in those secret moments where the sun caught her hair and he thought he knew what love was. _

_But it didn't end there. It ended a moment later, when Madge finally processed what had happened, and looked at him with more respect than Gale has ever seen one human being hold for another. _

Madge believes in people who keep their word. And now, Gale has fucked it all up. When he finally arrives at the payphone, he puts in three quarters and frantically dials the number for Madge's store, which he has written on the stone of his heart. His body shakes as he waits. It is picked up on the second ring, but not by the person he wants to talk to.

"Hello?"

It's Delly. Gale deflates, his body stilling even as he lets his mind wander into uncertain territory.

"Dell! Is Madge there?" He asks, his voice anxious.

There is so much on Gale's mind. The match. The press conference. How hungry he is right now. Madge. It's too much for one man to handle. So he chooses to focus on Delly's cheerful tone.

"Yeah, Gale, she sure is, I'll-"

Delly trails off, and Gale can almost see the scene transpire in the shop. Madge's head pops up from whatever book keeping she's doing when she hears his name and makes a throat slashing motion for Delly to cut it out. And since Madge has undoubtedly told Delly by this point about Gale's no-show the night before, Delly clears her throat before continuing with newfound severity-

"Actually, she stepped out for a while. No idea where she's going or when she'll be back. Sorry," she says, her voice too easily betraying her lie.

Gale resists the urge to punch something, knowing full well that he is the only one deserving of his anger right now.

"Alright," he struggles out, strangled and rough, "But if she gets back, ask her to watch the news today around noon? There's something on Channel 4 I think she'd be interested in seeing."

Delly's tone is pitying and it makes Gale's stomach turn. Oh, she'll tell Madge alright. But Madge might be too caught up in the own shadows she's making in her mind to actually listen to any message from the young man.

"I'll tell her, but I'm not saying she'll listen."

Gale nods, knowing that no one could ever make Madge listen to anything she didn't want to hear.

"Yeah," he sighs, "I know."

And, with that, he hangs up the pay phone, collects his change from the dispenser, and heads uptown on foot to begin his new life.

* * *

Madge doesn't want to turn on the television. She doesn't want to give him the satisfaction. The wound is too fresh, too vulnerable and angry all at the same time. The girl has no idea what he could want her to see on television, but it can't be that important, she decides. Oh, no.

But when noon rolls around, Delly has wrestled the remote out of her friend's hand and turns the tiny screen from behind the counter so they can both watch it. The assistant shopkeeper leaves Madge without room to argue. When the banner drops down and the flashes erupt, Madge can hardly believe her eyes as Gale Hawthorne marches out and takes a seat next to Thresh. He's wearing a hastily but finely tailored suit, his hair swept to the side and his face so clean he was almost unrecognizable. Madge's confusion mounts. Wasn't Thresh supposed to be fighting that Cato guy?

It is Plutarch Heavensbee, the stout blonde man with a smile like a bomb threat that makes the announcement.

Gale is fighting in the Championship match.

_The Championship Match._

The bottom drops out of Madge's world as she absorbs those words and everything that they mean. She grew up with Haymitch Abernathy. She knows what Gale has just signed up for.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

* * *

Madge sprints to her house. A full out, dead-on, sprint. She isn't sure she's run like this in her entire life. And when she reaches the top of the stairs after taking them two at a time, she is light-headed and disoriented, but she fills the empty, stainless steel trashcan in her bathroom with water and walks into Haymitch Abernathy's bedroom without knocking. She knows before she even enters that he will be asleep, and her prediction is not wrong.

And without batting an eyelash, she pours the bucket of ice-cold tap water atop his sleeping head, her stare direct and flat.

"What in the everloving _fuck_ do you think you're doing?" He splutters, rising from the bed and wiping his eyes with a dramatic flair.

Madge says nothing, her body heaving and her eyes fluttering with disorientation from the exhaustion of her sprint, levelling her gaze at him and reaching for the remote at his bedside, clicking the power button. Effie Trinket is on screen, her fluorescent green suit not making Madge's dizziness any better, asking Gale a question. Haymitch watches with newfound, rapt attention. He's putting the pieces together. And the terror and awe in his eyes is sending Madge a clear and direct message that sends her stomach turning. He, like Madge, thinks that Gale has just signed his own death warrant.

"So," Effie begins, her eyes wide and bright for the camera, "Is there anything you'd like to say to the people watching out there before you embark on this difficult and dangerous journey into the Championship Match training season?"

Gale doesn't hesitate for even a second and Madge watches him answer with grace. His smile is hesitant and he coughs before looking into the camera.

"I'd like to say Hi to Madge," he answers resolutely.

The struggle to swallow her smile is all-consuming and she looks at her uncle, her hands on her hips and her eyes narrow. This is more important than her girlish notions of romance and adoration. This is Gale's future. This is Gale's _life_. And she is going to get her uncle on board and they are going to save him. And that's that.

"I did that because you need to sober up if you're going to train him," Madge snaps.

She throws the remote control on the bed and walks toward the door, leaving her stunned uncle in her wake.

"And you _are _going to train him," Madge says, slamming the door behind her.

It is not a request. It is not a suggestion. It is an order handed down from a general to ensure that none of the soldiers he is charged with taking care of are lost in the throws of battle.

If anyone should be in Gale's corner, it is Madge.

Because Gale is coming out of this thing alive. That's a promise. And Madge keeps her promises.

* * *

_**Please review! I love to hear what y'all think!**_


	8. Chapter 8

A car takes Gale home. A car. An actual car. It is one of the only handful of times he can remember actually sitting inside a car. All his life has been walking and taking the underground everywhere he goes. But tonight, he is in a car.

"Hey."

The driver doesn't acknowledge that Gale has attempted to speak with him. He keeps his eyes straight ahead, the slightest bit uncomfortable at crossing the county line separating Uptown and Downtown.

"Hey….Guy," Gale says, reinforcing his voice, unsure of the driver's name.

Clearing his throat, the man in the black suit looks up at Gale through his reflection in the rearview mirror. Gale leans his arms against the edge of the partition, which is rolled down for the moment.

"Yes, sir?" The driver asks.

It takes most of what Gale has to not laugh…Calling him sir. He isn't a sir at all. He's just some kid from District Twelve. Ignoring the urge, the young man inclines his head a little closer to the man behind the wheel and points two blocks ahead of them.

"Can we turn here?" He prods.

From the moment Gale hung up the phone with Delly earlier this afternoon, he's had Madge on his mind. The idea that he hurt her, that he rejected her, hangs over him like a black cloud on this day that's supposed to be dedicated to him- that's supposed to be a celebration of him. He was able to sit in front of the cameras and reporters and smile and answer their questions, but his mind strayed to Madge. What was she thinking about now? Would he be able to salvage her feelings for him under the rubble that he created last night? He isn't sure of anything, except that the answers to his questions can only come from the Mayor's daughter. The driver shakes his head, but slows the car significantly on the dark, backlit street.

"I'm under instructions to return you to your apartment, sir," he says with a single nod of his head.

This man is owned by Plutarch and Seneca. He does only what he's told to. There are schedules and orders to adhere to and there isn't anything that he wants less than to lose his job over a scrappy boxer from the neighborhood.

Gale groans and realizes that the only thing he can do to win this man's understanding is to be honest. He must tell the man about Madge. Gale cannot go another night without seeing her. He has to talk to her. Otherwise, he isn't sure he'll be able to sleep.

"Yeah. I know. But I did kind of a bad thing to Madge and I need to make things right," he says, watching the driver's foot slacken on the pedal and the speedometer tilt to the left ever so slightly.

Eyebrows raise to the older man's hairline and he spares a glance to his passenger. The downtown streets pass ever slower from the glass picture frames of the tinted windows.

"Madge?" He questions.

Of course the man in the front of the car doesn't know Madge. A flush of embarrassment washes down Gale's cheeks, struggling to remember a time when he spoke with regularity to anyone who didn't know Madge, if only from the way that he talks about her near constantly.

"Oh, shit. Right. Uh, she's this…She's my…." Gale pauses for a moment, struggling to find the word. What is Madge, exactly? What would she want to be called? What is appropriate here? Girlfriend seems not enough for what she is, but also too much all at once. Shaking his head, Gale just points to the next street corner, desperation tinting his words, "Can you just turn here, please?"

A shift occurs somewhere in the man's face, softening ever so slightly as he turns the wheel.

"If you say so," he says in a voice like gravel.

Relief tickles Gale's lips.

"Thank you," the boxer says, leaning back in his seat.

Turn by turn, Gale directs the driver toward the Mayor's house, until they are parked in front and idling by the curb. Not for the first time, the young man looks up in awe and the monstrosity of a mansion built dead in the middle of the worst neighborhood in the entire city. The Mayor could have lived anywhere, and yet he chooses to live here. The thought of it makes Gale feels less than a foot tall. With a sigh, he looks back at the driver.

"I'll be a while," he says, reaching for the door handle.

A copy of the _Times _appears in Gale's sightline, and he swears he sees the man crack a smile for the first time during this adventure they've shared through District Twelve.

"I have my paper, sir."

The door opens and Gale offers one more thing before leaving.

"Thanks for doing this for me," he says.

A wink from the man in the front seat.

"I won't tell if you won't."

All of the lights are on the in the Mayor's house. It's a beacon on a hill that draws Gale like a moth. His steps go like a dance, jogging up the stairs to the tune of _one, two, one, two, one, two_ until he's finally at the massive front door. He knocks, his knuckles percussive and harsh against the wood keeping him from the woman he's come to see.

"Madge?" He calls, inclining his head.

There is no response, though the lights in the house are on. Gale knocks again, feeling all the while that this is his penance.

"Madge, open up," he says, gentle and repentant.

He leans against the doorframe, knocking again. In his imagination, Gale envisions Madge on the other side, listening to him and waiting for some sort of sight, some suggestion, that he really means what it is that he's saying. In that spirit, Gale offers his apology.

"Look, I'm sorry."

Right at that moment, the door is pulled out from beneath Gale's shoulder as it opens, forcing him to stumble over the lip of the frame until he is face to face with a stubbled and rough-faced Haymitch Abernathy. There is a drink in the old man's hand.

"What in the Hell are you doin' here, son?" Haymitch grumbles, his eyes tight and suspicious looking.

But Gale doesn't want to speak to the drunk. His goal is singular and the only thing on his mind at the moment.

"Where's Madge?" He asks.

Haymitch shakes his head, extending one hand to block Gale's path into the foyer, all the while sizing the young man up.

"That's not an answer," Haymitch responds, stern.

In sizing the boxer before him, Haymitch notices some things. There's a slack in his muscles. He favors his left leg, not unusual for a Southpaw. His body is leaner than Haymitch would like. The scars on the spaces in between his knuckles dictate a few years, at least, of neglect to tape them. His hair is not long enough. His shoulders aren't square enough. His footwork, even here, trying to evade Haymitch's grasp and run to find Madge, is sloppy. No wonder Thresh chose this nobody to fight for the World Championship. This poor, pathetic Southpaw hasn't even got a prayer of a chance.

"I'm trying to talk to Madge," Gale implores, trying to dodge Haymitch's body.

It takes only a side step and a furrowed brow to keep Gale from his goal.

"She's not available," Haymitch says, dryly, before continuing, his eyes weighing Gale up and down, "What've you been eating lately?"

The oddity of such a question stops the younger man in his tracks. He raises an eyebrow, his muscles tensing.

"Eating?" Gale asks.

Arms folded before him, Haymitch nods once.

"Yeah. Eating. What's your diet been like?"

Gale rubs the back of his neck, unsure what this has to do with _anything_. He isn't exactly flush with cash right now, or _ever_, really, and so his diet hasn't been anything close to what the model should be for a boxer of his size.

"Not much," he mutters, "Leftovers and stuff from my Ma's house."

A displeased expression settles in Haymitch's features and he grunts.

"Hm."

Pride bristling, Gale's voice takes on an edge.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He snaps.

Haymitch has never been a man to mince words, so he looks at the kid across the threshold from him and asks a question meant to get under his skin.

"You're gonna fight Thresh eating like shit?" Haymitch questions.

It shouldn't have surprised Gale that the man saw the news. After all, what does Haymitch do except sit around all day and eat Madge's food? The old prize fighter would obviously have turned the news bulletin up when he heard news about the Championship match.

"You saw that, huh?" Gale asks, unsure why the energy has drained so suddenly from his body.

For a long moment, Haymitch says nothing. He takes a sip from his drink, savoring the burning sensation that radiates from the tops of his teeth to the base of his throat as it goes down. There is a long internal debate over the turn that this conversation can take. Telling Gale would be easy, but Haymitch hasn't agreed yet to train the young man. After all, there's nothing _but _work to do with this kid. He's got no shot of winning. He's barely got a shot at making it out of this fight alive. Either way, Haymitch says it anyway.

"Madge wants me to train you," Haymitch says.

The air around them turns to fire and lights Gale's entire being ablaze. Maybe she doesn't hate him after all.

"She wants you to _what?" _Gale asks.

With that grim look that can only come from a man with few options, Haymitch nods and tells the truth. It's a decision that's gotten him in trouble with Madge many times, but it's the decision he's made nonetheless. Haymitch was never good at learning from his mistakes.

"Yeah. Train you up. She thinks you can win this thing," he responds.

Like a dehydrated man searching for water, Gale tries to scoop up every last drop of information Haymitch has on the subject.

"How do you know that?"

The rest of the drink escapes from the blonde man's glass as he shrugs and downs the brown liquor.

"I don't," Haymitch begins, "I'm just pretty sure. If she came to me for this, she has to believe in you pretty hard."

It is Gale's turn to ask the question, and ask away he does.

"You wanna train me?"

Haymitch shakes his head resolutely, giving an answer that doesn't surprise Gale even remotely.

"Nope," he states flatly.

They're still standing on opposite sides of the doorway, a place of conversation that Gale is now intensely familiar with, having spent much time in this exact spot over the last few days. Nothing changes, no matter how much money the big shots offer him in exchange for his life.

"Why not?"

The answer that follows does surprise Gale, the honesty and the brutality of it striking him like a left hook dead to the temple.

"Haven't been in a training arena, much less a fighting match, since Maysilee died. Never plan to again," he says.

It's true. But less painful than the reality that Haymitch simply doesn't want to train the kid for the thing that is going to inevitably kill him. Haymitch has as much faith in this kid surviving this fight as he does in himself ever getting sober.

"So are you _gonna_ train me?" Gale asks after a stretch of windy silence.

There's only one response that Haymitch has to offer.

"Madge asked me to."

Gale could really use a trainer. Sparring with Peeta isn't going to be enough, and he knows it. But he doesn't have the money to pay for Katniss or anyone like who Thresh is going to have. If Haymitch would do it _pro bono_…. That's one less problem.

"That's not an answer," Gale replies, stealing the older man's words from earlier.

Desperation is a tricky thing and when Haymitch sees it in Gale's eyes, he sighs.

"Yes, it is. You'll be here at four thirty sharp tomorrow morning. Dressed and ready to work. This is on a trial basis, you understand? You fuck up tomorrow, you don't get another shot."

Knowing that he has no right to argue, Gale does so anyway.

"If you haven't been in a ring in so long, why do you think you can train me to fight Thresh?" He asks.

In a flash quicker than Gale could have ever anticipated, Haymitch's fingers curl into a fist and he swings for Gale's ribs, knocking into them with a force inhuman for a man of Haymitch's age and experience gap. The air knocks from Gale's lungs, and he staggers back a few steps. Shaking the pain from his hands, Haymitch raises an eyebrow.

"That answer your question?"

A shaking hand going to the soon-to-be bruise on his stomach, Gale catches his breath.

"Yeah," he agrees.

Haymitch's career was long and illustrious, ending only when he got in too deep with the sharks. Fixed fights ended his life, ended Maysilee.

"I trained under the best fighters of my time and never lost a match I didn't throw. If anyone in this town can train you, it's me," he promises, his ego not backing down from the verbal spar with this kid.

Gale rises back to an upright and standing position, though his hand doesn't leave the place where Haymitch made contact. The clock on the wall behind the man's head tells him that he only has a few hours until he's due back here for training.

"Four-thirty in the morning? What about six?" He asks.

He's going to need more sleep if he's going to win Haymitch over tomorrow morning.

"Sure. We can do six," He says, letting Gale breathe a sigh of relief before continuing with smug assurance, "If you want to lose."

Unable to argue with that, Gale nods. Pain radiates from his only recently healed ribs, but he grits his teeth. There will be worse injuries come the big bout with Thresh.

"Fine. Four-thirty," he concedes.

Haymitch turns around, going to shut the door behind him.

"Get some shut-eye, kid," he says.

But Gale's free hand shoots out, holding the door open. He came here to see Madge. He has to see Madge. Has to apologize, has to tell her how sorry he is. Has to make it up to her.

"What about Madge?"

Furrowing his brow, Haymitch wishes with a silent aching that he had more liquor in his glass.

"What about her?" The old prize fighter whips back.

Though Gale would have thought the answer to that query obvious, he doesn't offer a snarky retort or even allow any frost to sink into his voice. This man is going to train him for the biggest fight of his life. He'd better get on his good side.

"Can I see her?" He asks.

If it weren't for the look of shame that he'd seen Madge bear earlier today when she told him about what happened between her and Gale the night previous, Haymitch would have almost felt sorry for the broken look that Gale offered alongside his question. He shakes his head. No. Gale is not going to see Madge tonight. Tomorrow, maybe. But not tonight.

"She may think you can win, but she's still hurt," Haymitch says.

Unsure of what to say, Gale offers:

"I didn't mean to stand her up."

Haymitch knows that. He's seen the way that the Hawthorne kid trails after Madge like she were leading the way to Heaven, but all the same, it doesn't change the fact that an already fragile girl got hurt evermore deeply. The absence of Gale, the breaking of his promise, cut through Madge's porcelain and revealed a bit of the steel underneath.

"I'm sure you didn't. Doesn't change the fact that she's hurt," he states.

Gale runs a hand through his hair and asks one more thing before leaving. If he can't get assurance from her, he's got to have something to hang on until she's comfortable seeing him again.

"She really thinks I can win this thing?" Gale asks.

The diplomatic answer escapes Haymitch's lips before he can stop himself and offer the truth instead.

"If you train with me, you might have a shot at not getting yourself killed. That's good enough."

* * *

When the young man's car disappears from the curb in front of the house, Haymitch shuts the door and walks into the parlor, where Madge was pretending to read a book as she eavesdropped on the entire conversation. Her eyes stare blankly at the page before her, flipping them idly every few seconds at Haymitch watches her pretend to only half-hear him. He pours himself another drink and she must bite her tongue from saying anything.

"Madge?" He asks.

The page flips and the ice shakes in the older man's drink.

"Yeah, Haymitch?" She responds.

He decides to fill her in on the details she's already keenly aware of. He knows that she was listening the entire time, but the benefit of the doubt is sometimes necessary where Madge is concerned. Unable to read her, he sinks down into his chair with a groan before making himself comfortable and propping his legs up on the nearest coffee table.

"I'm gonna train him," he says.

Struggling to keep her voice offhand and casual, Madge shifts against the pillows propping her up on the couch.

"Good," she responds.

In truth, Madge finds it almost unbearable to contain herself. Haymitch really _is _Gale's only chance at surviving this thing. Once she asked her uncle to train him, she spent the entire afternoon watching footage from Thresh's best fights. She's never seen Gale fight, but she knows that it would take any boxer fighting the fight of his life in order to beat the current champion. There is silence for a while. Haymitch drinks and Madge daydreams while pretending to read.

"Madge?" Haymitch asks once more.

Spooked out from the inside of her mind, Madge returns to her book, wondering when the plot got so insipid and absurd. She turns a distasteful page and keeps her eyes focused on the dramatic and unrealistic words.

"Yeah, Haymitch?" Madge responds again, her voice a metronome in the still air.

She isn't sure what to expect now, but whatever it was that she was expecting isn't what she gets.

"I think he's a good kid," Haymitch mutters.

Madge agrees, though she won't say it out loud at this moment. Yes, he's a good guy. But she isn't sure she's good for him. She isn't sure she's good _enough_ for him. The thought leaves a stitch unstitched in the fabric of her heart.

"Alright," she says, tone uninterested and blank.

More silence. More drinking. More page turning. More flashbacks to Thresh's footage. More uncertainty and even more silence still. Then:

"Madge?" Haymitch asks a third time.

"Yeah, Haymitch?" Madge responds a third time.

Haymitch bites the inside of his cheek.

"Are you gonna forgive him?" He asks.

The young blonde woman across the room from him does not answer for the first time in the night. Perhaps it isn't a question of her forgiveness, she thinks. If Gale doesn't want her, he made that perfectly clear when he stood her up. And if he isn't interested in her, then what does her forgiveness matter? Her calculated silence turns to a stewing brood.

"Madge?" Haymitch asks a final time.

His question is returned with a snap from her.

"Yeah, Haymitch?" She asks, her voice tight.

Then he says something that twists Madge's stomach and forces her to look up at her uncle in surprise and hope.

"I don't think he can win this thing without you."

* * *

Four-thirty in the morning is an ungodly hour and Gale nearly breaks his alarm clock with his bare hands when he is subjected to its racket before the sun is even up. But he jogs to the Mayor's mansion all the same, wearing his rattiest pair of grey sweats, ready for the first day of the Hell that he will most certainly endure over the next few weeks. When he ambles up to the house, the only light on is in the kitchen, so he opens the front gate and walks to the left of the house. Arriving at the kitchen door, leading from the side porch to the space right between the wall and the refrigerator, Gale lets himself in, marveling at the realization that the Undersees do not lock their doors at night.

"Haymitch!" He says, peeking in through the screen door.

There is no reply, so he steps all the way in this time.

"Haymitch!" He calls.

Shutting the door behind him, Gale's eyes sweep the kitchen, looking at the basket of fresh, beautiful, clean fruit that feels a million miles away from the 76 cent fruit cups that Posy brings to lunch every day.

"Anyone home?" He asks into the empty air.

Pieces of him are, perhaps, hoping that Haymitch is asleep, that the old drunk forgot about training and decided to sleep in, in which case Gale can go home and collapse beneath his covers once more. But someone is awake. Someone who is not Haymitch.

"C'mon in," A voice says, walking into the kitchen from the adjoining pantry.

Hair tied up in a high ponytail, blonde curls only just brushing the base of her neck in an alluring come-hither motion, Madge stands across the room from him. Legs and torso covered in lycra and spandex, she's outfitted in a running outfit that Gale can only assume cost more than his monthly grocery bill. She looks ready for a workout herself. Reaching to a chair, across which her sweatshirt is thrown, Madge slides the thick fabric over her shoulders before zipping it up the front. A bottle of water is sweating on the kitchen table and Gale knows how it feels.

"Madge," he manages.

In spite of the strength of her stance, Madge's eyes are weak, unable to meet his. She stares at the black and white tiles of the floor, crossing her arms over her chest as he strains to hear the quiet words she mutters.

"You stood me up," she nearly whispers.

Gale can't find anything to say but:

"I did."

He could have defended himself, he could have tried to say something to force her to forgive him. He could have said that he didn't have access to a phone or that the producers of the fight wouldn't leave him alone for a minute or that he tried to tell her father to pass on a message, but he must have forgotten. He could have fed her lies, but he doesn't. And Madge respects that.

"You could have called," she says.

He nods, only able to speak in simple sentences, wondering where his polysyllabic words ran off to.

"I should have," he agrees.

She looks up at him, confusion and retreat written all over her face. This is her chance to lay her cards on the table. _Tell me you want me or tell me you don't_, she begs internally. She simply can't stand the uncertainty. She needs something real for once in her life.

"Why didn't you?" She asks, thinking that this is the moment he will say something that she can hold on to.

But he doesn't. He just tells her the maddening truth.

"I don't know," Gale says.

Madge's protest breaks his heart.

"That's not an answer," she retorts.

Gale nods.

"I know. I'm sorry," he says.

They stand there, doing nothing but staring at each other for longer than Madge would care to admit. She waits for him to say something, to say that he didn't stand her up because he thinks this match is more important than her, that he thinks the money is more important than her. But he doesn't. So, she simply says:

"I wish you would have called."

On that point, they both agree.

"Me too," Gale says.

She swallows back her emotions, managing to look him in the eye hard and fast.

"Are you ever going to do that to me again?" She asks.

It is a demand for the truth and Gale answers it honestly.

"No. I promise," he swears.

And she sees that he means it. So, Madge takes it as a small victory, though not the victory she was fighting for.

"Okay," she says.

Scooping up her water bottle, she walks for the door without giving him so much as a goodbye.

"Where are you going?" He asks.

Madge turns around, her ponytail skirting the air as she goes. For the first time today, the smaller of smiles pencils its way across her features.

"We're going to train."

* * *

**So here we go! Off to train for the big match! Please let me know what you thought! I love to hear from you guys! Also, if you go to my blog (the link is on my author profile page!), there is a poll question on the next story I am going to write! Please, please, please help me choose! I would love your input! Thanks so much for reading and helping me out!**


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